Right-wing Marine Le Pen, who has been banned by a court from running for election for five years, urged her protégé Jordan Bardella to prepare to campaign ahead of the 2027 presidential election in France.

“I accept that I cannot be a candidate. Jordan accepts that he has to intervene. I asked him personally to think about it and to prepare for this possibility,” Marine Le Pen told the newspaper Valeurs Actuelles in an interview published yesterday (Wednesday).

It is the first time she has publicly mentioned the possibility of the president of the National Rally (RN) running for president instead.

A court found Le Pen guilty in early April of “misusing EU funds”. The most controversial and certainly suspicious aspect of the conviction is that she was deprived of the right to vote for five years. Her sentence had immediate effect.

The 56-year-old’s statement partly contradicts what she had been saying so far, as she had pinned her hopes on an appeal court expected to rule in mid-2026 and dismissed any possibility of Mr Bardella standing. She nevertheless asserted that she remains determined to run for the highest office of the French state in 2027, for a fourth time.

“Jordan and I will participate in the internal party process until the appeals court decides,” she explained to the newspaper.