What If Marine Le Pen’s Candidacy Ends Here?
Despite all efforts to rebrand her party, Marine Le Pen has so far failed to be voted into power. That was supposed to change in 2027 — until now. Thaima Samman and Jean-Pierre Malbec analyze how Le Pen reached this point and what might happen next.
The ruling of a court banning one of the frontrunners in the next presidential election from running for office due to the misappropriation of EU funds is merely the latest tremor in the profound political transformation France has been experiencing this past decade.
The verdict, whether or not upheld on appeal, upends the dynamics of the French presidential election, an election which is the cornerstone of its current political system and institutions.
Less than two years from that 2027 election, its outcome is completely up in the air. The ruling is a game-changer which opens up the prospects for the second round, and ultimately for winning the highest political office in the country, for people and parties who never dreamed of this being a real possibility before.
Looking back
One of France’s main characteristics, and also strengths, for over 60 years had been the stability of its institutions and political life, organized around two major center-right and center-left governing parties and their satellite allies, were two major blocs/parties: the Socialist Party (center-left) and the “Gaullist” right, around which satellite parties sometimes congregated (the Communist Party where Socialists were concerned, and more traditional right-wing parties, by European standards, where the Gaullists were concerned), rotated in power depending on their electoral fortunes.
France, like all liberal democracies, has undergone political transformations during recent decades. The emergence of a far-right party that managed to make it to the second round of the presidential election back in 2002 was already a sign of things to come. The 2017 victory of Emmanuel Macron, a political newcomer claiming to represent a new path transcending the traditional right-left divide, was the first institutional manifestation of this change, heralding the end of the traditional French political system.
Another development confirming this transformation has been the slow implosion of the historical governing parties and the steady rise of Marine Le Pen’s National Rally (RN). The RN has come out on top in every European election since 2014 and became the largest party in the French National Assembly in the 2024 snap elections.
Acceleration of the political landscape transformation with the 2024 legislative elections
By moving to dissolve the National Assembly, after a significant electoral defeat in the June 2024 European elections, Emmanuel Macron increased both political fragmentation and confusion.
The dynamics underpinning the European elections pointed to a very strong showing or even victory of the far right in the snap elections. However, these dynamics were upended by the mobilization of all other political parties and the rest of the electorate around a “Republican Front” to block the far right’s road to power.
Another surprise was that parties on the left stopped their infighting and brokered an electoral alliance to secure the votes needed to make it to round two. They succeeded and came in first, but did not secure an absolute majority in the National Assembly, which is where the future government must look to for its majority.
Following those elections, France’s political landscape has solidified around three major blocs:
The far-right RN, which has come out strengthened, but also weakened. With 123 members of parliament out of 577 (an increase of 40%), it is the most homogeneous bloc in the National Assembly. But the prospects of winning power, which had seemed to be within grasp at the time of the snap elections, has in fact receded and the election results have shown just how far the RN still needs to go in overcoming the strong rejection of almost 70% of voters. Those voters are willing to vote for candidates with very different convictions to their own, just to block the RN’s road to power.
A classic right-wing bloc, built around the former presidential majority, which now captures the pro-market, pro-EU demographic. But despite their similar programs and values with the “Gaullist” parties, the former presidential majority proved unable to strike a power-sharing deal with them after the 2022 elections. An alliance of convenience did allow them to build a government agreement and obtain some of the leadership positions in the National Assembly, including that of President of the National Assembly.
The left-wing coalition New Popular Front (NFP) came in first but was unable to reach a power-sharing agreement and/or to attract the missing lawmakers to build an absolute majority at the National Assembly.
But each of these blocs is porous at its edges: the center-left could well ally itself with the center-right, and part of the conservative right has already allied with the far right.
Marine Le Pen’s journey in the past two decades
Marine Le Pen has been the uncontested leader of her party and, more broadly, of the French far right family for more than two decades, even though in 2021 she officially passed the baton as president of the RN to her then second-in-command, Jordan Bardella.
Daughter of Jean-Marie Le Pen, the historic leader and former president of the FN, founded by former members of the Waffen-SS and neo-Nazi sympathizers, and his designated political heir, Marine Le Pen progressively and successfully distanced herself from her family and political heritage.
She rebranded the party in 2018 and rewrote its narrative as a fringe party by dropping some of its conservative values and embracing social populism, even crossing over into far-left economic policies at times, fully riding the wave of popular trends. In a purely opportunistic manner, she became pro-choice on abortion, adopted a stance of benevolent neutrality on gay marriage and, more recently, refused to impose a party line on assisted dying. Her line is now very pro-Israel and her disavowal of anti-Semitism has even won over part of the Jewish community. In short, in her bid for legitimacy and respectability she has jettisoned anything that would prevent mainstream political leaders from associating with her and keeps her MPs on a tight leash to contain any tendencies rooted in their past. At the same time, she is sticking to her narrative on her pet subjects, namely immigration, Islam, security issues, and national preference and has shown a talent for winging it.
So far, this strategy of enlarging her voter base has not allowed RN to break through and obtain the decisive 10 or 20 percent of the votes it needs or forming the political alliances necessary to win national elections. In addition, the “coalition of the antis”, which ensured her defeat in all recent elections under the two-round majority voting system, could still effectively regroup. However, the current weakness of all other parties and the momentum she has managed to create since the RN’s (relative) defeat in the 2024 snap elections put Marine Le Pen in a position that has never been more favorable for victory in 2027.
The March 31, 2025 verdict against Marine Le Pen et al.
A Paris court found Marine Le Pen guilty of misappropriating EU public funds in the case of fake EU parliamentary jobs involving the National Front (FN), the RN’s predecessor. The court disqualified her from public office for five years, with immediate effect, including in case of appeal, under the terms of a provisional enforcement order. It also handed her a four-year prison sentence, of which two were suspended and two are to be served at home, and a fine of 100,000 Euros. 23 other RN members, including former members of the EU parliament, were also found guilty and sentenced.
Marine Le Pen has already said that she will pursue all legal means to challenge this decision, including by applying to the Constitutional Council for a so-called priority preliminary ruling on the issue of the constitutionality of her immediate disqualification from public office.
The justice system has assessed the situation and is taking steps to expedite a final decision before the start of the presidential campaign in March 2027. Theoretically, everything remains possible at this point: from the upholding or reversal of her disqualification by all courts or institutions she may turn to, to contradictory decisions prolonging the suspense until the very end.
The only certainty at the time of writing is that the verdict against her in the first-instance proceedings seriously tarnishes her reputation and compromises her possibility of winning the next presidential election.
A verdict altering the dynamics of the next presidential election
While Marine Le Pen has come out weakened after the ruling, she may be down but not yet out. Even if the appeals court does not uphold the provisional enforcement of her disqualification from running from public office, there is a strong possibility that her conviction for the misappropriation of public funds will be upheld. While she might remain in the running, it would be in a radically changed political environment and her presidential election prospects would be seriously compromised.
After some initial uncertainty among the media and political leaders regarding the appropriate response to the verdict, the low turnout at the protest rally organized the following weekend “against this attack on democracy” indicates that this narrative put forward by RN leaders did not go down well in the country.
Additionally, Jordan Bardella’s good showing in opinion polls testing him as a candidate in the 1st round of the presidential election also had a significant boomerang effect within the party. The viability of a credible alternative candidate to Marine Le Pen contradicts the argument that the verdict was politically motivated in a bid to “kill” the party’s chances in the election. However, the current party president and “king of social media” does not have the same reach or legitimacy she does. While the latest projections for the first round of the 2027 election don’t show a significant gap between the two leaders, a visibility campaign aimed at building political credibility is one thing, and the stamina needed to sustain a credible presidential campaign another thing entirely. Bardella will have to face and/or unite his own political family, first within RN, which does not have the same loyalty and allegiance towards him as it does towards Marine Le Pen, but also with other far-right leaders outside the RN. Furthermore, it would be rash to predict Marine Le Pen’s reaction if her protégé were to be in reach of success, or whether her support might take the form of a kiss of death.
At a crossroads
Until the verdict, the RN, via Marine Le Pen, was assured of a spot in the second round of the presidential election. In a context where none of the political blocs can win on their own, and in the midst of a major realignment of the political landscape, French political life could take a new turn, with neither of the two 2017 and 2022 presidential election finalists being a position to win in 2027. It may take at least a few months before we know what candidates and political families are in a position to come out on top in this new configuration, including Marine Le Pen or Jordan Bardella.