Marine Le Pen to run for French presidency and appeal conviction in top court

The Court of Cassation is likely to take a few months to reach a decision. If it does confirm Tuesday’s verdict, Le Pen could find herself having to wear an electronic tag as the election campaign moves into its most important period early next year. This would risk becoming an embarrassment as well as a handicap.

In the hours after Tuesday’s court verdict, Le Pen was locked in talks with Jordan Bardella, as well as lawyers and party colleagues. Then she and Bardella were driven to the studios of TF1 TV for her decision.

If elected, she stated she and Bardella would work together – she as president and he as prime minister. “We have a solid partnership, we complement each other… We have offered the French a duo… that I believe is complementary, balanced, coherent, solid.”

She said Bardella had been with her for years and the cause was greater than the two of them: “The tests we have gone through have made us stronger, both in will and in the quality of our work together.”

Ahead of Tuesday’s verdict Le Pen had said several times she would not run for president if she had to wear tag as she would not feel “totally free” to campaign.

Political opponents criticised Le Pen’s decision to run for president despite her guilty verdict.

“Her candidacy, despite her conviction, is yet another reversal that damages the French people’s trust in politics,” Othman Nasrou, secretary-general of the right-wing Republicans, told news agency AFP.

Former Prime Minister Gabriel Attal noted there was “moral dimension to the decision to run despite one’s criminal record and a sentence for embezzlement of public funds”.

But one of Le Pen’s main rivals for the presidency, ex-Prime Minister Edouard Philippe, said it was up to Marine Le Pen to make the decision to run, but she had been convicted twice and would have to explain herself to the French people.

When asked what would happen if her appeal to the Court of Cassation did not go her way, Marine Le Pen said: “We will see, and the French will be the judge, because the good news from this evening is they will be free to choose”.

She was reminded that she had said last year she would be cleared on appeal, and yet that had not happened. “Everyone can be mistaken,” she replied. “Let us hope that the Court of Cassation is not mistaken.”