Bardella eclipses Le Pen as French far right awaits verdict that could decide 2027

For two decades, the story of France's far right was the story of Marine Le Pen. On Tuesday, a Paris appeals court could write its final chapter — and in doing so confirm that the movement she rebuilt has already moved on without her.

The Paris Court of Appeal is due to rule on 7 July on Le Pen's challenge to her March 2025 conviction for embezzling European Parliament funds, a judgment that will decide whether the 57-year-old can stand in the April 2027 presidential election. The date was fixed by the court's president in February. Yet across French politics the more consequential shift has already happened: her handpicked successor, 30-year-old National Rally (RN) president Jordan Bardella, now outpolls her, outpaces every rival, and is quietly assembling a campaign of his own.

The verdict that could end a career

Le Pen was found guilty on 31 March 2025 in the long-running case over the European Parliament's assistant-funding system, which prosecutors said the RN used to pay party staff. The court concluded she had been "at the heart of a fraudulent system," and handed down four years in prison — two suspended, two to be served under electronic tag — a €100,000 fine and, decisively, a five-year ban from public office with provisional execution, meaning it took effect immediately. That ineligibility bars her from 2027 unless the appeal overturns it.

She appealed within days, and the appeal hearing this year did little to soften the prosecution. State lawyers asked the court to keep the five-year ban in place, describing the scheme as "deliberate and carefully concealed" and, in one memorable phrase, as "public money siphoned off drop by drop until it formed a river." Le Pen has consistently denied wrongdoing. "We have never concealed anything," she told the court, arguing she believed the arrangements were permissible.

If the judges uphold the ban, Le Pen's fourth run at the Élysée is over. If they lift it, she is back in a race she has spent her career pursuing. Either way, the party has spent the intervening months preparing for a future in which she is not the candidate.

The protégé who no longer waits his turn

Bardella has been RN president since November 2022, an MEP since 2019, and since July 2024 the leader of the hard-right Patriots for Europe group in the European Parliament. Under him the party took 31.4% in the 2024 European elections, its best-ever national result. Untouched by the funding scandal, he emerged as the obvious fallback the moment Le Pen was convicted — and the polls have rewarded him.

Recent first-round surveys are strikingly consistent, all showing Bardella well clear of the field:

Ifop-Fiducial for LCI and Le Figaro (late February 2026): Bardella up to 37%, ahead of Le Pen on 32%.

Ipsos (27–28 May 2026): Bardella 34%, former prime minister Édouard Philippe 13.5%.

OpinionWay (10–11 June 2026): Bardella 34%.

Ifop (22–24 June 2026): Bardella 36%, Philippe 19%.

By early summer, Le Pen had dropped out of the first-round tables altogether, a casualty of her legal status. Frederic Dabi, director general of the Ifop institute, called the moment a break with the past. "This dissociation between the two is a real turning point," he said.

Publicly, Bardella maintains the careful deference of an heir who does not wish to look impatient. Asked yet again in June whether he was readying a presidential bid, he returned to his stock line.

I am until further notice preparing to be (Le Pen's) prime minister.

Inside the party, the succession is being framed not as a rupture but as a partnership. "Whether it's one or the other, neither is going to pack a bag and hit the (campaign) road on their own," said senior RN lawmaker Laurent Jacobelli. "They will be a team."

A different far right — and a warning for Europe

A Bardella candidacy would not simply substitute a younger face for an older one. He has signalled a more free-market, business-friendly economics than Le Pen's protectionist instincts, and he polls more strongly among private-sector workers, business owners and older voters. His rise also carries a distinctly European edge that matters well beyond France's borders.

On a two-day visit to Poland in June, where he met Law and Justice leader Jarosław Kaczyński, Bardella cast 2027 as a hinge for the whole continent. If the French and Polish nationalist movements both won, he said, they could "redirect the way the European Union operates," promising to "put the Commission and the EU back at the service of the nations and no longer the other way around."

For Luxembourg, whose largest neighbour France remains its principal economic and political partner, the stakes are immediate. The RN is now France's dominant electoral force, and a Bardella presidency — or even a strong Bardella campaign — would reshape the Franco-German motor of the EU, cross-border labour policy and the bloc's direction on migration and trade.

None of that is settled. Tuesday's ruling could scramble the picture, restoring Le Pen or hardening the case against her. But the deeper trend is no longer in doubt: for the first time in the movement's history, the far right's brightest electoral prospect does not carry the Le Pen name.