By Elizabeth Pineau and Stephanie Lecocq
PARIS/HENIN-BEAUMONT (Reuters) -A Paris court said on Tuesday three appeals have been filed so far in the case against the far-right National Rally party that saw leader Marine Le Pen banned from running for office for five years, but did not provide details on who had filed them.
The appeals court said in a statement it would issue a ruling on the appeals in the summer of 2026, ahead of the 2027 presidential election.
A lower court convicted Le Pen and two dozen people from her National Rally (RN) party of embezzling EU funds on Monday. It imposed an immediate five-year ban on Le Pen running for office that will bar her from standing in 2027 unless she can get the ruling overturned on appeal before then.
Le Pen’s lawyer said on Monday she would appeal the ruling, but it was not clear if she had done so yet.
Monday’s ruling was a major setback for the longtime RN leader, who had been a front-runner in opinion polls for the 2027 presidential election. The ban will not be suspended during any appeal she lodges.
Le Pen supporters at home and abroad have called the ruling biased and undemocratic and the party’s president, Jordan Bardella, called on the French to protest this weekend against the ruling.
“The French should be outraged, and I tell them: Be outraged!” Bardella told Europe 1 radio and CNews TV. “We’ll take to the streets this weekend.”
He said there would be leafleting and meetings across France and that RN lawmakers would hold news conferences in their constituencies. The party announced a rally in Paris on Sunday.
Le Pen told RN lawmakers she considered the ruling a “nuclear bomb” launched by the establishment against her. A heated debate over the ruling dominated the weekly session of questions in the National Assembly, where the RN is the largest single party.
Centre-right Prime Minister Francois Bayrou told parliament he backed the ruling but also that he had questions over Le Pen’s election ban being immediate.
“As a matter of law, any criminal decision with serious consequences should be subject to appeal,” he said, adding that he was speaking as a citizen rather than the prime minister.
Bayrou said that if lawmakers they did not like the law that allows judges to make such a ban immediate, they should change it. One lawmaker allied with the RN, Eric Ciotti, said he would seek to do just that.
President Emmanuel Macron, who beat Le Pen in elections in 2017 and 2022, has made no public comment.
OPINION POLL
The judge announcing Monday’s court ruling, Benedicte de Perthuis, said Le Pen had been “at the heart” of a scheme to misappropriate more than 4 million euros ($4.3 million) of EU funds.
De Perthuis said a lack of remorse shown by Le Pen and other defendants was among the reasons that prompted the court to ban them from running for office with immediate effect.
Le Pen was also given a four-year prison sentence – two years of which were suspended and two years to be served under home detention – and a 100,000-euro ($108,200) fine, but those will not apply until her appeals are exhausted. Appeals in France usually take months or even years.
The defendants were accused of using EU funds illegally to pay the party’s staff back home instead of EU parliamentary assistants. They denied wrongdoing and said the money was used legitimately.
Bardella could become the RN’s de facto candidate for the 2027 election. But Le Pen made clear she was not yet ready to hand him the baton, saying on Monday: “I’m not going to let myself be eliminated like this.”
An opinion poll showed a majority of French people agreed with the ruling barring the RN leader. Some 57% of those interviewed by Elabe pollsters for BFM TV said the ruling was normal considering what Le Pen was accused of, while 42% considered it politically biased.
In Le Pen’s stronghold of Henin-Beaumont, in northern France, RN officials handed out leaflets that read “Let’s save democracy. Support Le Pen!”
Reactions there to the ruling were mixed.
“It’s a shame because we needed a different president. We needed the RN to win,” 56-year-old resident Pascal Walkowiak said on Monday.
Another resident, Isabelle, 60, said: “Too bad for her. I think it’s a good thing because she made mistakes.”
(Additional reporting by Gianluca Lo Nostro, Sudip Kar-Gupta, Nicolas Delame, Bertrand Boucey and Makini BriceWriting by Ingrid MelanderEditing by Alison Williams and Frances Kerry)
