French far-right leader Marine Le Pen says she will run for president

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Far-right leader Marine Le Pen said she would run for the French presidency despite judges upholding her embezzlement conviction, setting up an unprecedented election campaign next year.

“I am a candidate for president tonight,” she told TF1 news channel on Tuesday evening, adding that she would appeal the conviction to France’s highest court for criminal and civil matters. “My hands are clean today. I will go to the Court of Cassation to prove it.”

Le Pen’s decision ends more than a year of uncertainty over whether she or her handpicked successor, Jordan Bardella, would lead the Rassemblement National’s campaign to replace President Emmanuel Macron.

But Le Pen is making a risky bet that voters will back her despite her conviction on serious corruption offences. No presidential candidate in France has ever run with such a record.

Another challenge is that the court ordered Le Pen to a three-year suspended prison sentence that includes a year wearing an electronic monitoring bracelet. Another judge will later set the specific conditions of the monitoring, such as travel limitations or curfews, and could even shorten the period she has to wear it.

Appeal judges on Tuesday found Le Pen guilty of a deliberate scheme to use EU parliament funds to employ staff working on French national politics rather than their duties in Brussels. They stressed the seriousness of Le Pen’s wrongdoing, saying as an elected member of the European parliament she had an obligation to be ethically above reproach and not misuse taxpayer funds.

But they also gave Le Pen a key reprieve, lightening her sentence by reducing a five-year electoral ban imposed by the lower court to 45 months with 30 of those suspended. With the remaining 15 months already served, that left Le Pen free to decide whether to run.

Le Pen said she would not have to wear an electronic bracelet during the campaign because the appeal to the Court of Cassation would put the sentence on hold.

Asked if she was certain about this outcome, she said: “I have no doubts at all. Jordan Bardella and I will very quickly launch this presidential campaign.” She added: “There is no longer any scenario in which I could not run.”

Shortly after her television appearance, Le Pen announced her campaign on social media with the slogan “For France, for the Renaissance”.

Le Pen, 57, and Bardella, 30, are expected to make an appearance together on Wednesday at a food market — a campaign tradition in France — in the Loire Valley town of La Flèche.

Constitutional lawyer Anne-Charlène Bezzina expressed incredulity at the idea that Le Pen would stand for office after such a heavy conviction.

“She is taking the risk of driving her party straight into a wall,” she said.

Le Pen said she believed it would have been “an enormous democratic problem” if she had been barred from running. “The French must have the last word, and now they will.”