A French court upheld hard-right leader Marine Le Pen’s conviction for embezzling public funds but cleared the way for her to stand in next year’s presidential elections, scrambling her party’s expected strategy for claiming the Élysée Palace.
It is likely that Le Pen would be confined to her home with an ankle monitor during the campaign, leaving the door open for her deputy Jordan Bardella — a 30-year-old neophyte with whom she often disagrees — to represent the National Rally, which holds a commanding opinion poll lead.
Regardless of who heads it, the party’s victory would represent “a rupture in French governance,” one expert wrote in Foreign Affairs. “And such a rupture would, in turn, send shock waves through the EU itself.”