Marine Le Pen, the veteran leader of France's far-right Rassemblement National (RN) party, has formally launched her campaign for the 2027 French presidency, just one day after an appeals court ruling cleared the way for her fourth run at the Élysée Palace. Appearing on television channel TF1 on Tuesday evening, she declared simply: "I am the candidate for the presidency tonight." The following morning, she joined party chairman Jordan Bardella at a weekly market in La Flèche, a small town in the Loire Valley roughly 250 kilometres southwest of Paris — a setting chosen to reinforce her long-cultivated image as the champion of working-class and rural France.

The announcement came hours after a Paris appeals court reduced the ineligibility penalty stemming from her conviction for misuse of European Parliament funds — a case tied to the RN's previous incarnation as the Front National. The court shortened the disqualification period sufficiently to allow her to stand in April 2027, but it upheld a prison sentence to be served under electronic tagging, meaning Le Pen would normally be required to wear an ankle bracelet and observe strict curfews limiting her movements. She has already challenged the ruling at the Cour de Cassation, France's highest court, which reviews cases for legal errors rather than relitigating facts. Her legal team argues that, pending that decision, she need not yet wear the device — a calculated bid to buy time. The attorney general, Rémy Heitz, said the court would aim to rule before the first round of the presidential election, but acknowledged the timeline was not entirely within the court's control.

The ruling reshuffled internal party dynamics almost overnight. In the months since Le Pen's original March 2025 conviction, the RN had been preparing to field Bardella — a polished 30-year-old who had published a book on his political vision and undertaken foreign trips, including to Israel — as its presidential candidate. At the La Flèche market, Bardella played second fiddle, his notably closed expression prompting immediate commentary in the French press. The left-leaning newspaper Le Monde described him as appearing almost absent beside a visibly triumphant Le Pen. Bardella himself told reporters he felt "neither disappointment nor relief" — a response analysts noted was characteristically disciplined and loyal.

For France's European partners, the prospect of a Le Pen presidency carries considerable weight. France is the EU's second-largest economy after Germany, and the two countries have long anchored the bloc's cohesion. While Le Pen has softened her rhetoric over the years — dropping calls for France to leave the euro or the EU — analysts and the Financial Times describe the RN as still a major disruptive force, one that would push to reshape EU institutions from within on issues of border policy, energy, and relations with Moscow, much as Italy's Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has done, but, as some observers note, with fewer constraints. The European far right is operating in a more permissive landscape than in 2017, when Le Pen lost to Emmanuel Macron.

Polling by the Ifop institute puts Le Pen at around 36 percent support in a first-round scenario — a significant lead that makes a second-round contest a genuine possibility rather than a mere formality. The opposition remains fragmented across the centre, centre-right, and left, with no consensus candidate emerging. Her criminal conviction has so far done little to erode support within her own camp, and the RN appears adept at reframing judicial pressure as political persecution. The coming nine months will be defined by a double uncertainty: whether France's highest court rules before or after the election, and whether the fractured opposition can coalesce around anyone capable of stopping her.