At 1.30 p.m. today, the Paris Court of Appeal is due to deliver its judgment in the case in which Marine Le Pen has appealed the 2025 first-instance ruling that stripped her of the right to stand for election for five years – thereby excluding her from running in the 2027 presidential election.

It was on 31 March 2025 that the Paris court found Le Pen and other party members guilty of embezzling EU funds allocated to the Rassemblement National (RN) group in the European Parliament between 2004 and 2016, on the grounds that the money had allegedly been used to strengthen the party organisation in France.

Both on the French and the wider European Right, the entire case against Le Pen has been regarded as a form of legal warfare against one of the West’s foremost right-wing populist politicians, who has previously stood as a presidential candidate on three occasions. The question to be answered today, therefore, is whether she will be removed from contention or not, having enjoyed a lead of more than ten percentage points over every potential rival in the opinion polls until the first judgment was handed down.

There is little sign of optimism on Le Pen’s behalf within the RN camp, but her lawyers, Rodolphe Bosselut and Sandra Chirac-Kollarik, believe they have identified a decisive legal flaw in the first-instance judgment, Le Figaro reports: the provision of the Criminal Code that has been applied against her (and others) concerns the misuse of French public funds, not EU funds, and therefore cannot be applied in this case.

It has long been clear that Jordan Bardella will become the RN’s presidential candidate for the election, which will take place on 18 April and 2 May 2027, if the judgment against Marine Le Pen is upheld, and both the party and the public have long been prepared for that to be the outcome.

In any event, a number of opinion polls indicate that the RN candidate is the favourite to win the election. Whether the candidate is Bardella or Le Pen, he or she is expected to win the first round by a comfortable margin.

The uncertainty therefore centres on the second round. However, opinion polls in recent months have shown that the RN candidate is also on course to win the run-off, regardless of who the opposing candidate may be – a Macronist, a Socialist, a representative of the far Islamic Left, or a (more or less) Republican. The names currently in contention are Gabriel Attal, Raphaël Glucksmann, Jean-Luc Mélenchon and Édouard Philippe. The latter is regarded as the strongest challenger.