In the case of misappropriation of public funds to the detriment of the European Parliament, Marine Le Pen was sentenced on Tuesday July 7 by the Paris Court of Appeal to a three-year prison sentence, two of which were suspended. The court specified that the firm part would be carried out using an electronic bracelet.
Marine Le Pen was also sentenced to 45 months of ineligibility, 30 of which were suspended. Considering that this sentence had started to be served since the end of March 2025, the president of the RN could in principle be a candidate for the presidential election of 2027, if she agreed to campaign while she is under electronic surveillance.
In fact, what can you do or not do when wearing an electronic bracelet? What are the rules that Marine Le Pen will have to respect for a year?
What is commonly called “wearing an electronic bracelet” corresponds in legal terms to “house arrest under electronic surveillance” (ARSE). This sentence is handed down to relieve prison congestion, when the court considers that the litigant presents certain guarantees (little risk of absconding or recidivism, ability to present himself to serve his sentence, etc.). This is the most used alternative to incarceration for sentences of less than two years.
Placed under house arrest and monitored
By issuing this decision, the court forces Marine Le Pen to remain in a specific location for the duration of her sentence, wearing a bracelet which will include a transmitter connected to an alarm. She will then no longer be able to leave this place, except under specific conditions (days, times and reasons set by the judge) and within a restricted area. For any exit outside this defined framework, authorization must be requested in advance from the judge. The latter gives his agreement on a case-by-case basis.
If Marine Le Pen leaves her home outside of set hours or if she goes to a place prohibited by the judge, the surveillance center will be immediately notified by the alarm on her bracelet. For each alarm signal triggered (it can also sound in the event of a simple delay), an incident report is written by an agent from the monitoring center. It is sent to the judge and the public prosecutor. A person who does not respect their obligations regarding placement under an electronic bracelet may be subject to an arrest warrant.
Constraints not compatible with a campaign
The bracelet is theoretically fitted within five days of the order for placement under ARSE, if conditions permit. Marine Le Pen’s sentence could last from July 2026 to July 2027.
If the president of the RN decided to be a candidate in the presidential election, she would therefore have to campaign with this electronic bracelet, which she had ruled out before even knowing the judgment of the court of appeal. “If it is a question of authorizing me to be a candidate, but of actually preventing me from conducting a campaign completely freely, you understand that that will not be possible,” she affirmed Thursday, July 2, insisting on one point: “When you are a presidential candidate, you must be completely free in your movements. »
Such a situation would be completely unprecedented. If Marine Le Pen still decided to campaign and managed to be elected on May 2, 2027, she would become president before having fully served her sentence. Such a hypothesis would then place the Fifth Republic facing an improbable scenario: that of a president still subject, at the time of her entry into office, to a measure of judicial surveillance.
In December 2024, Nicolas Sarkozy became the first former President of the Republic to be sentenced to wear an electronic bracelet for a year. The former head of state only underwent it for three months (bracelet placed on February 7, 2025 and removed on May 14, 2025), after having benefited from the conditional release regime, due to his age (70 years).
