Marine Le Pen, said today she is preparing for an early presidential election, saying President Emanuel Macron’s term in office is almost over.

Le Pen, who has led her party, the National Rally, from the margins to the political limelight, is seen as one of the front-runners for the French presidency.

She faced Macron in 2017 and in 2022 she garnered an even larger share of the vote when Macron won a new five-year term.

“I am preparing for an early presidential election as a safety measure, considering how fragile Emmanuel Macron is, how few institutional levers of leverage he still has. Emmanuel Macron is finished or nearly finished, Le Pen said in an interview with Le Parisien, adding that his prestige has been eroded both nationally and internationally. “He has outraged everyone. He no longer has any influence in the EU,”Lepin noted.

Macron has repeatedly said that he will not resign. The Elysee Palace commented: “The president has already spoken out on this issue.”

Le Pen faces personal political challenges, however. She and other members of her party have been accused of using EU funds to pay party workers in France.

Le Pen has called the case a political witch hunt. If convicted, she is likely to face a five-year ban from seeking public office.

The trial is expected to conclude in March.

After the European elections, in which her party made electoral gains, Macron called early parliamentary elections, which – as he promised – would clear the political landscape.

Instead, however, no party won an absolute majority, leaving Le Pen and her party with considerable influence.

The divided parliament already cost Macron a government when Le Pen’s party joined forces with the left to support a motion of impeachment against Prime Minister Michel Barnier.

A poll concluded that Le Pen emerged stronger from the process.

The National Rally had argued that the budget Barnier presented for 2025, in which he had attempted to reduce the country’s deficit by raising some taxes and cutting spending, did not address voters’ concerns about the high cost of living.

“Our position has not changed,” Le Pen said in the interview.

She also said she was encouraged by talks she had had with the country’s new prime minister, veteran centrist politician François Bayrou, who has yet to announce the composition of the new government and has already been criticized for his handling of the situation after the cyclone hit Mayotte in the Indian Ocean, an overseas territory of France.

“He says he will listen to us, but he’s not the first to say it,” Le Pen commented in her interview.