According to BFMTV, Marine Le Pen has sought legal advice, including advice from the Constitutional Council, to determine the exact date on which its eligibility should be assessed for the 2027 presidential election. The Paris Court of Appeal is due to issue its decision on July 7 in the case of the European parliamentary assistants of the National Rally.
A penalty of ineligibility has already come into effect.
As a reminder, the president of the National Rally group in the National Assembly was sentenced in the first instance, on March 31, 2025, to a five-year ban from holding public office, with immediate effect. In other words, the sentence began to take effect immediately, without waiting for the final outcome of the appeal.
The debate centers on the date by which eligibility should be verified.
The question raised is central to the rest of the presidential election: should Marine Le Pen be eligible at the time of the nomination process, or on the day of the first round? According to BFMTV, the response given to the leader of the National Rally is as follows: "The response she received was that she must be eligible on election day." Institutional resources, for their part, remind us that a candidate for the presidential election must, in particular, have the status of a voter, while the Ministry of the Interior emphasizes that the next presidential election will take place in 2027.
The 2027 calendar therefore becomes crucial
In this context, the electoral calendar takes on crucial importance. The first round of the next presidential election is scheduled for April 2027. If Marine Le Pen's ineligibility sentence is reduced from five years to two years in the ruling of July 7, 2026, she could then become eligible again in time to run. For a candidacy to remain a possibility, the sentence must not exceed two years, starting from the initial ruling of March 31, 2025, while the election is expected around April-May 2027.
