The decision in Marine Le Pen's appeal trial will be rendered on July 7, the president of the court announced on Wednesday, at the end of the final pleadings of the lawyers who are trying to extract an acquittal or, failing that, a measured sanction against the woman who is running for a fourth time at the Élysée.

Published on: 02/11/2026 - 04:21 Modified on: 02/11/2026 - 18:44

The date is now set. The decision in the appeal trial of Marine Le Pen and the RN will be rendered on July 7 at 1:30 p.m., the president of the court said, Wednesday, February 11, at the end of the debates.

The public prosecutor's office requested five years of ineligibility against Marine Le Pen, who is running for a fourth time in the presidential election.

“The sooner (the decision was made), the better off I was,” she told a few journalists at the end of the hearing.

A few minutes earlier, one of her lawyers, Mr. Rodolphe Bosselut, had warned the Paris Court of Appeal: "Here she is on the verge of a crucial election for the country. (...) But this presidential election makes the judgment that you will have to make dizzying."

At first instance, Marine Le Pen was notably sentenced to two years of wearing an electronic bracelet and five years of ineligibility with immediate execution, which prevents her at this stage from being a candidate for the Élysée.

Read alsoThe essentials of Marine Le Pen's appeal trial: "A questioning of the facade"

Marine Le Pen has already indicated that she will make her decision on a fourth candidacy as soon as the appeal sentence is announced, without waiting for any future decision from the Court of Cassation.

The equation is simple: she must only be sentenced to a maximum of two years of ineligibility and a suspended sentence.

It is no less difficult: the requisitions are more or less consistent with the first instance judgment... which was also almost modeled on the first conclusions of the prosecution.

Read alsoCriticize the ineligibility of Marine Le Pen, “an indication of the loss of basic democratic values”

“If a crime has been committed, I want to hear it”

He is accused, as well as the National Rally (at the time the National Front) and ten other executives, of having hired parliamentary assistants for the party's MEPs, paid by European funds, but whose activity was for the sole benefit of the flame movement.

At the opening of the debates, Marine Le Pen seemed to sketch the beginnings of a mea culpa: “If a crime has been committed, I want to hear it.” But without “intention”, she added.

The three avenues have already been largely cleared since last week by the lawyers of the other defendants, giving the pleas of each of them the air of a dress rehearsal. They had also already been presented at first instance, without success.

“I am a believer... so I believe in miracles”

Which did not prevent Marine Le Pen from maintaining her confidence in Rodolphe Bosselut, whom she met more than 30 years ago during police custody visits when both were freshly graduated from law school.

In the absence of a real change in strategy, this second trial in any case took place in a much more peaceful atmosphere, with a president whose "listening" everyone praised: enough to nourish the hope, however slim, that a favorable outcome is still possible.

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“I am a believer... so I believe in miracles,” Marine Le Pen joked last week.

His face has since betrayed more serious feelings, as this courtroom where a history of the French extreme right was concentrated – Bruno Gollnisch, Wallerand de Saint-Just and of course the regular evocation of Jean-Marie Le Pen – could become the tomb of a lifetime's ambitions.

A friendly MP sums up: "In the event of conviction, she understood that she would have to come to terms with it, even with death in her soul." A pragmatic party executive adds: “In all cases, we are campaigning, we are preparing the RN to come to power.” Even if it’s with Jordan Bardella.

With AFP

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