Far-right leader Le Pen starts campaign, faces mixed reactions in France 

Far-right leader Marine Le Pen has launched her presidential campaign in western France, the day after an appeals court enabled her to run despite confirming her conviction for embezzling European Union funds to pay party staff.

The mood was mixed on Wednesday as she shook hands in the street market of the small town of La Fleche in the Loire Valley.  Some jeered: “Give the money back!” and “Go to jail!”, while others chanted “Marine, president!” – a sign of the tensions that may lie ahead.

Le Pen, who at 57 has already run for president three times and is leading opinion polls for next year’s ⁠election, has seized her opportunity for another attempt to become modern France’s first far-right president, hoping voters will overlook her legal woes.

“The aim of our campaign is to bring about France’s revival,” she said in La Fleche, pledging to revive sovereignty, justice, security and education. Hours earlier, her team had launched a campaign website with a picture of her holding out her arms, with the slogan: “For France, Revival.”

Le Pen said La Fleche, a longtime left-wing bastion that in March elected a 25-year-old mayor from her anti-immigrant National Rally (RN), was symbolic of the party’s growing reach. Asked repeatedly about Tuesday’s verdict, she sounded irritated and told reporters, “I’m not going to spend my whole campaign analysing legal matters.”

Meanwhile, supporters clamoured for selfies, which she readily gave.

“Marine, you’re the best!” said one.

The appeals court ordered Le Pen to wear an electronic ankle tag for a year that would have required her to return home from the campaign trail every night. Her announcement of ‌a final ⁠appeal to France’s highest court, the Cour de Cassation, had the effect of putting that order on hold.

The court said on Wednesday that it could rule on Le Pen’s appeal by early April 2027, before the two rounds of the election on April 18 and May 2, but that procedural questions could shift the ⁠timing. If it upholds Tuesday’s judgment early enough for its ruling to come into force, Le Pen might have to wear an electronic tag for the last weeks or days of her campaign.

If Le Pen were elected president before it rules, she would in any case not have to comply with the verdict until her term expires.

The RN had already started to prepare for the possibility that Le Pen’s protege, 30-year-old Jordan Bardella, would be its candidate for president. Le Pen’s decision to stand set back Bardella’s own ambitions to run immediately for the highest office, although Le Pen says if she makes it to the Elysee Palace, he will be her prime minister.

Looking earnest as he stood next to a beaming Le Pen in La Fleche, he said he was very happy to be kicking off her campaign.