French far-right leader Marine Le Pen faces a make-or-break court ruling on July 7 on her bid to overturn an election ban, a verdict that could knock her out of the 2027 presidential race or clear the way for her to seek the top job for a fourth time.
France’s political class is anxiously awaiting the appeal ruling, which will determine whether Le Pen, 57, or her protégé Jordan Bardella, 30, carries the far-right banner into an election less than a year away, with their anti-immigration National Rally (RN) still riding high in the polls.
A French court in March 2025 handed Le Pen a five-year ban from public office and a four-year jail sentence for embezzling funds from the European Parliament, pending appeal, in a seismic verdict that reverberated beyond France and drew harsh words from U.S. President Donald Trump and other right-wing leaders.
With the RN closer than ever to winning power in France, the European Union's second-biggest economy, party leaders have been forced to contend with unexpectedly-early succession planning, and its impact on policy lines.
Asked during a foreign trip last month if he was readying to be the RN's presidential candidate, Bardella delivered his stock response: "I am until further notice preparing to be (Le Pen's) prime minister."
But the mood among Le Pen's troops in parliament is nervous.
Even if the party has a plan B in Bardella, many lawmakers who joined under the leadership of Le Pen, who transformed it from a fringe nationalist movement to the single biggest party in parliament, said they would mourn the loss of a towering figure if she was definitively barred.
"You can never be totally prepared. It would be a kind of personal grief if it happened," RN lawmaker Thomas Ménagé told reporters. "However unfair the verdict is, we'll accept the decision, we're not revolutionaries," he added.
France’s political class is anxiously awaiting the appeal ruling, which will determine whether Le Pen, 57, or her protégé Jordan Bardella, 30, carries the far-right banner into an election less than a year away, with their anti-immigration National Rally (RN) still riding high in the polls.
A French court in March 2025 handed Le Pen a five-year ban from public office and a four-year jail sentence for embezzling funds from the European Parliament, pending appeal, in a seismic verdict that reverberated beyond France and drew harsh words from U.S. President Donald Trump and other right-wing leaders.
With the RN closer than ever to winning power in France, the European Union's second-biggest economy, party leaders have been forced to contend with unexpectedly-early succession planning, and its impact on policy lines.
Asked during a foreign trip last month if he was readying to be the RN's presidential candidate, Bardella delivered his stock response: "I am until further notice preparing to be (Le Pen's) prime minister."
But the mood among Le Pen's troops in parliament is nervous.
Even if the party has a plan B in Bardella, many lawmakers who joined under the leadership of Le Pen, who transformed it from a fringe nationalist movement to the single biggest party in parliament, said they would mourn the loss of a towering figure if she was definitively barred.
"You can never be totally prepared. It would be a kind of personal grief if it happened," RN lawmaker Thomas Ménagé told reporters. "However unfair the verdict is, we'll accept the decision, we're not revolutionaries," he added.
