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Jordan Bardella, president of Rassemblement National or National Rally, gives a speech and flies French flags at a rally in support of Marine le Pen after her conviction on April 6, 2025.
Could Jordan Bardella become France’s youngest president?
Jordan Bardella, the 29-year-old president of France’s far-right National Rally, aka RN, has announced his readiness to run for the country’s presidency in 2027 if current party leader Marine Le Pen remains barred from contesting the race.
Le Pen was convicted in March of embezzling European Parliament funds and received a five-year ban from public office, a €100,000 fine, and a four-year sentence, partially under house arrest. She is appealing the verdict, with a decision expected in summer 2026. Supporters of Le Pen decried the decision as political and an attempt to bar her from running.
Is age an issue? French law only requires that a candidate for president be over the age of 18. Current President Emmanuel Macron holds the title of youngest head of state, having defeated Le Pen in 2017’s presidential contest when he was 39. He is now 47.
What are Bardella’s chances? The 2027 contest is widely seen as giving France’s far right its best shot at power. Macron is required to step down after two terms in office, and polling published on April 5 places RN in first place, under either Le Pen or Bardella. Should Bardella be the presidential candidate, he would, according to today’s polls, win between 31% and 35.5% of the first-round vote.Marine Le Pen spoke at a support rally organized in Paris on Sunday.
Le Pen supporters protest her electoral ban in Paris
Approximately 15,000 supporters of France’s far right gathered at Place Vauban in Paris on Sunday to support Marine Le Pen, leader of the National Rally party. The three-time presidential candidate was recently convicted of embezzling European Union funds to pay staff, resulting in a five-year ban on holding public office, effectively barring her from France’s 2027 presidential election.
The event was described by French media as more of a campaign launch than a protest. Jordan Bardella, the 29-year-old president of the National Rally and Le Pen’s protégé, delivered a fiery speech accusing the judiciary of creating “a system determined to crush dissent,” while across the Seine, a small counter demonstration called for “No Trumpism in France.”
In a video address to an Italian far-right party before the protest, Le Pen invoked the legacy of American civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. as the inspiration for her “nonviolent, democratic struggle” against what she calls a politically motivated “witch hunt.” At the protest, she declared her intention to appeal the ruling, with a decision expected by summer 2026.
The timing of Le Pen’s appeal is critical for the future of France’s nationalist party. If her conviction and ban are upheld, she will be unable to run for president in 2027. While Bardella is popular, he does not have as devoted a following as Le Pen, and his youth and inexperience could work against him.National Rally leader Marine Le Pen poses prior to an interview on the evening news broadcast of French TV channel TF1, in Boulogne-Billancourt, outside Paris, France, on March 31, 2025.
Can France’s Marine Le Pen run again?
National Rally leader Marine Le Pen was found guilty by a French court on Monday for embezzling European Parliament funds. She was sentenced to four years (with two years suspended and the remainder under house arrest with electronic monitoring) and faces a five-year ban from running for public office.
Coup de grâce? Le Pen shared her anger with French voters. “Like you, I’m scandalized, indignant, but this indignation, this feeling of injustice, is an additional push to the fight that I fight for [the voters],” she said on French television Monday night.
Le Pen’s lawyer said she will appeal the decision, which will likely lead to a retrial in 2026 — months before the 2027 presidential election. Le Pen can also petition the Constitutional Council to review her case and ultimately decide her eligibility. Last week, this court ruled that local politicians can be barred from office immediately if they are convicted of a crime — but this won’t apply to national figures like the National Rally’s longtime leader.
“Le Pen will now seek to make her appeal explicitly political, arguing before the Constitutional Council that she is too important a politician to ban and that doing so would be an affront to French democracy,” said Rahman. Even so, her route back to eligibility won’t be easy.
Next in line. If Le Pen is ultimately barred from running, National Rally President Jordan Bardella would be the most likely candidate to succeed her. The clean-shaven millennial, who grew up in the Paris suburbs, has tried to expand the party’s tent by courting younger voters and distancing the party from Le Pen’s father, the Holocaust-denying founder of National Rally.
Will Marine Le Pen's conviction really keep her out of French politics?
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: A Quick Take to kick off your week. Turning to France where Marine Le Pen, who has long been the leader of the National Front, now renamed National Rally Party, and principal contender her party to win French elections in 2027, which would be an absolute turning point in French elections, as meaningful for France as Trump's second win in 2024 in the United States, has been found guilty in a criminal court in France of embezzlement charges up to $500,000 directly and millions of dollars in terms of mishandling the way European funds were being used for staffers, including her sister and her best friend and a bodyguard. Not a political case at all, actually just a criminal court. Nobody arguing that the judge is particularly politicized here. And while two of the years of the jail term's suspended, the first two years, she has to wear an ankle bracelet. So we'll probably get a video of that real soon. I'm sure it'll be fashionable, since it's France.
But the point is, this would prevent her from running in 2027. And that would mean that Bardella, who is number two essentially in that party, all of 29 years old, nowhere near as popular as Le Pen and would completely tank the ability of the National Rally to win, would become the candidate. It is too early to say that this ban is going to stand up. She has an appeals process. She can bring it to the French equivalent of the Supreme Court, a constitutional counsel, to answer what'll be called a priority question of whether her immediate five-year ban from politics before her appeals against the conviction can stand as valid. And there's a very good argument that has been made in the plaintiff's favor in recent cases that this would not stand. And that while her appeals are going on, she would still be eligible to run, and indeed, she'd be able to go through this appeals process through 2027.
So what now looks like and is being reported in the English language press as she's being thrown out of politics probably isn't going to stand. So in other words, Le Pen out for now. Le Pen probably back soon. And France, in 2027, a really significant, maybe watershed moment from where European politics are going to go. Because if you look at politics right now, you have Friedrich Merz, probably shortly after Easter going to be putting together his grand coalition government, very strongly pro-Europe, very centrist government. You have Meloni, who certainly has a good relationship with Trump, but nonetheless, very strongly pro-EU and very much wanting to act as a bridge to support the EU in using her relations in the United States to be effective in that regard. Macron same, and even Keir Starmer in the UK, post-Brexit, yes, but wanting to be seen as a European leader. Hence taking the lead with Macron in all of these Ukraine summits. That's for now.
But as we look forward to what politics in 2027, '28, '29 look like in Europe, we could easily see that in Germany, suddenly Alternative für Deutschland could do better. Especially if the economy is not doing well. And could force the Germans to be in a position where they would have to enter a coalition with them. In France, very much the National Rally Party and Le Pen still in contention. In the UK, the Reform Party in contention too. So the end of Trump's term for Europe and the transatlantic relationships looks radically different than the beginning of Trump's term. And today's news headlines on France are a blip, not a structural shift. Watch this space as Le Pen is still very relevant indeed. That's it from me, and I'll talk to you all real soon.
French far-right leader Marine Le Pen, member of parliament of the Rassemblement National party, leaves the courthouse on the day of the verdict of her trial alongside 24 other defendants over accusations of misappropriation of European Union funds, in Paris, France, on March 31, 2025.
Le Pen barred from running from office after embezzlement conviction
Oh là là! A French court on Monday found National Rally leader Marine Le Pen guilty of misappropriating European funds to her far-right party, and barred the three-time presidential candidate barred from running for office for the next five years. Le Pen has denied wrongdoing and said last November, “It’s my political death that’s being demanded.”
Les détails: French authorities accused Le Pen of hiring assistants while she was a member of the European Parliament and using them to perform party operations, even as the European Parliament was paying their wages. As well as barring her from running for office, the judge sentenced the anti-immigrant politician to four years in jail — two are suspended and the other two must be served with an electronic tag. Le Pen will speak on French TV at 8 p.m. CEST (2 p.m. EST).
Plus ça change ... Le Pen is the latest far-right politician to run into legal trouble in recent years. Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu has been accused of corruption, the Brazilian Supreme Court ruled last week that former President Jair Bolsonaro must stand trial over his alleged efforts to overturn the 2022 election, and US President Donald Trump was convicted last year of falsifying business records in a bid to influence the 2016 election — he escaped punishment by winning reelection.
After a third-place finish in the 2012 presidential election, Le Pen made it through to the head-to-head runoff in both 2017 and 2022 but lost to President Emmanuel Macron on both occasions. She is expected to appeal this ruling, with a retrial likely taking place just months before the 2027 election. If she is allowed to run for a fourth time, she may be in her strongest position yet.
France National Front presidential candidate Jean-Marie Le Pen addresses a political rally in Lille on Feb. 25, 2007.
Father of the French far right dies
Jean-Marie Le Pen, whose ultranationalist and conservative views enraged millions but also shaped the contemporary French political scene, died on Tuesday at 96.
Le Pen was a far-right fixture of French politics for nearly five decades as a legislator in the French and European parliaments, and as founder and leader of the National Front party, which he founded in the early 1970s.
What were his politics? A theatrical orator and a fierce opponent of immigration – he sought the “purification” of France and a return to traditional Catholic values – Le Pen’s rhetoric often veered towards xenophobia, homophobia, racism, and antisemitism. At least half a dozen times he was convicted of either inciting racial hatred or denying the Holocaust.
And yet, beginning in the 1970s, he, along with anti-tax advocate Pierre Poujade, amassed a dedicated following among a slice of the French public who resented the governing elite, struggled with economic hardship, and viewed immigration from France’s former colonies in Africa and the Middle East as a threat to their livelihoods and French culture.
Le Pen ran for the presidency five times. He never won but he came closest to the prize in 2002, when he made it to a runoff against Jacques Chirac, taking nearly 20% of the vote.
Ultimately, his more extreme rhetoric came to cap the appeal of his party. When his daughter, Marine, inherited the organization from him 15 years ago, it was something she sought to address.
“He gave her a family business,” says Mujtaba Rahman, managing director of Europe at Eurasia Group. “But she had to change the brand.”
While she kept the focus on limiting immigration and protecting French cultural values, she distanced herself from his antisemitic and homophobic rhetoric, expelling him from the party, and changing the name to National Rally.
The party has surged in popularity in recent years. Politics in France – as elsewhere in Europe and the US – have shifted rightward in ways that were hard to imagine even during the height of Jean-Marie Le Pen’s polarizing influence in the early 2000s.
In 2022, Marine got more than 40% of the vote in the presidential runoff against Emmanuel Macron. And last summer, National Rally won the first round of France’s snap elections outright for the first time.
Le Pen’s legacy continues to polarize French politics. Far-right TV host and former presidential candidate Eric Zemmoursaid Le Pen “was among the first to alert France to the existential threats that awaited it.” Far-left leader Jean-Luc Melenchon, meanwhile, said that “the fight against the man is over” but that “the fight against the hatred, racism, Islamophobia and anti-Semitism that he spread continues.” Macron, for his part, said Le Pen’s legacy “is now a matter for history to judge."French President Emmanuel Macron speaks with then-EU Chief Brexit Negotiator Michel Barnier in February 2019.
France’s new PM: Barnier gets the job, but Le Pen holds the cards
Barnier’s biggest job will be to reassure Brussels and investors that he can lead France out of the political and fiscal crisis that has plagued the country for months. In particular, he’ll have to fill a big shortfall in this year’s budget and pass a deficit-cutting budget for 2025. To help with this tall task, he’ll try to form a national unity government that includes influential politicians from the center-left, Macron’s centrist bloc, and the center-right.
But, as Eurasia Group’s lead Europe expert Mujtaba Rahman warns, Barnier doesn’t begin from a position of political strength. He represents his country’s center-right, which won just 47 of the 577 deputies in the new National Assembly. “The key figure for Barnier’s survival will be the far right’s Marine Le Pen," Rahman says. Given the math, and the eagerness of the far left to push Barnier out, “Le Pen has the power to bring down the Barnier government whenever she chooses."
Gabriel Attal, the French Prime Minister, is leaving the Elysee Palace in Paris, France, on July 16, 2024, after the last Council of Ministers before Emmanuel Macron accepted his resignation.
French Prime Minister resigns: what now?
French President Emmanuel Macron accepted the resignation of his Prime Minister, Gabriel Attal, on Tuesday. Who will take his place? Good question!
France now enters a fraught transition period in which Macron’s outgoing ministers act as a caretaker government while a new coalition is hammered out.
As a reminder, this all resulted from the French snap election, which took place a million news cycles ago earlier this month. Marine Le Pen’s far right National Rally party won more seats than any other single party, but lost to the New Popular Front, a leftwing patchwork in which Jean-Luc Melénchon’s far-left France Unbowed party is the biggest player.
Macron, whose centrist party placed third, called for an agreement “as soon as possible.” But it could take time. None of the blocs has enough seats to form a government alone, and coalition-building among political rivals after elections is uncommon in France. The Europhile Centrist Macron and the Euroskeptic hard-left Melénchon, for example, share little beyond a common disdain for Le Pen.
France’s transitions have never lasted more than 9 days, but as things stand, it would be a gold medal miracle if France has a new government before the Paris Olympics start next Friday.