News24 | Marine Le Pen launches French presidency bid despite embezzlement conviction

In launching her fourth bid for the French presidency, just hours after judges cleared her to run, Marine Le Pen portrayed herself as a fighter who had defied the odds to overcome a months-long legal battle that threatened to end her political ambitions.

“There are many French people who are going through hardships, and we too are going ‌through hardships,” Le Pen said on a prime-time interview on TF1.

Many believed Le Pen’s presidential hopes were dead until a Paris appeals court on Tuesday shortened her electoral ban for having embezzled European Parliament funds to pay staff at her anti-immigrant National Rally (RN) party in France.

The ruling cleared her to stand in the 2027 election, even as it upheld her conviction.

READ | 'Seismic political shift': Advantage to French right wing as second round voting begins

Le Pen said she plans to appeal the guilty verdict while also running for the top office.

Not only is she rolling the dice on whether France’s top court will rule in her favour in her last-ditch appeal against Tuesday’s judgment, she will also test French voters’ appetite for electing a figure two separate courts have now ⁠found guilty of embezzlement.

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Le Pen believes it is a risk worth taking, betting that voters will overlook her legal woes to elect her as France’s first far-right leader in modern times.

“I think you should never impose anything on the French people; they must have the final say, and now the French people will have the final say,” she said.

Brigitte Barèges, a former lawmaker from a right-wing party allied with the RN, said she understood why the RN chief was running.

“You want to show those who caused you this setback that you are not dead because of it, that you are still there.”

Le Pen’s decision to run comes as the nationalist RN has never been closer to power.

Polls suggest Le Pen will easily make the second-round runoff in next year’s election, although victory is less certain.

Her presidential hopes had been in limbo since March 2025, when she received a five-year ban on running for office, but Tuesday’s ruling allows her to campaign as long as she wears an electronic tag.

Le Pen told TF1 she was confident she could run without a tag that would impose limits on her movement, and confirmed her 30-year-old protégé, party president Jordan Bardella, will run ‌alongside her ⁠to become prime minister if she is elected.

She rejected the idea that Bardell