Marine Le Pen Launches Her 2027 Run: Restore the Rule of Law, Deport Foreign Criminals

Marine Le Pen opened her 2027 run for president of France on Sunday in Orléans, and her biggest promise was one French voters haven't heard from the Élysée in ten years. "We are going to restore the rule of law," she told the crowd.

Then she asked the question every looted shopkeeper in France has been asking. "Who can say there is a rule of law when criminals are not punished, when mafias impose their law in the neighborhoods, when hordes come to ransack and burn our buildings in front of disarmed police?"

Her answer fits in one sentence. Anyone who breaks the law, "and especially anyone who attacks firefighters, teachers or police officers, will have three certainties: the certainty of prosecution, the certainty of the sentence, the certainty that it is carried out." Foreign criminals get one more: "automatic expulsion." It was one of the most-shared lines of her speech on X.

Le Pen has run for president three times before and made the final round twice, in 2017 and 2022. On Sunday she sounded like someone who expects to finish the job.

How she's even on the ballot

Here's the part most of the coverage skips. Until this summer, Le Pen wasn't allowed to run at all.

On March 31, 2025, a Paris criminal court convicted her of embezzling European Parliament money that paid assistants who actually worked for her party. The judges banned her from office for five years, and they made the ban start that day, before any appeal. That would have knocked her out of 2027.

On July 7, 2026, the Paris Court of Appeal upheld the conviction but cut the ban to 45 months, with 30 of them suspended. The 15 months she actually had to serve had been running since March 31, 2025, so by July they were done. The court said ignoring that would harm "the freedom of candidacies" and "the freedom of the voter's choice," as France Télévisions reported from the courtroom. Think of a driver whose license suspension already ran out while he waited for his appeal. He's back behind the wheel.

She also drew a three-year sentence, one year of it to be served under an electronic ankle monitor. So she'll campaign with a court still watching her. Her supporters see the whole case as a bid to beat her in a courtroom instead of at the ballot box, and the appeals court just handed the decision back to the voters.

Borders, zero tolerance and cartels treated as terrorists

Le Pen tied crime to borders in one line. "If we don't put borders on the outside, we will be forced to build them on the inside. We will restore our borders and we will apply zero tolerance."

On who belongs, she was blunt: "In France, you live like the French!" French citizenship, she said, "will once again become a privilege that is inherited or earned," with "a new right" attached to it: "national priority," which means French citizens come first. And "no text, no authority, and certainly not a foreign one, even a European one, will be above our Constitution."

Rioters would pay for what they break. "If the rioters have to pay their whole lives, they will pay their whole lives." Then she went after the drug gangs.

Americans have seen that idea before. The Trump administration's State Department labeled the big Mexican cartels foreign terrorist organizations in February 2025. Le Pen is promising France the same playbook.

Peace, and no wars that aren't France's

She promised to keep French troops out of other people's fights. "French blood has flowed too much: we will not send our young people to die in reckless war adventures, and even less in wars that are not ours." She said there would be no "warrior machismo" under her, and that France would keep sole control of its nuclear weapons: "any concession of this instrument of our sovereignty is an act of treason."

Bardella for prime minister, and a step back from the party

She named her prime minister six months early. "My prime minister will be Jordan Bardella," the 31-year-old party president, at the head of "an open and pluralist government" of national unity. Naming him now, she said, "is an act of transparency, honesty and loyalty."

Then she cut her own party ties. "I have left the presidency of the Rassemblement National and I am going to leave the presidency of the parliamentary group starting tomorrow," she wrote. "I want the French to be certain they are electing a woman who will not be a party's man." That post had passed 290,000 views by Sunday night.

The pocketbook pitch

Le Pen also went after the cost of living that has French families squeezed. She won't raise the retirement age "to 65, 67 or even 70." Her fix is to get young people working sooner, since "the average age of a first stable job is 27." Young people who start a business would pay no income tax, and a new national investment fund would back French companies.

Her one-liner for the left and the right: "The right blames the one who suffers, the left blames the one who succeeds. I refuse to pit them against each other." Then she borrowed what she called an Indian proverb: "I am neither the right wing nor the left wing, I am the bird!"

What happens next

Emmanuel Macron can't run again after two straight terms, so the field is open. Le Pen says she has "six months of campaign" left, and the Rassemblement National counted more than 8,500 people in the hall on Sunday. She steps down as leader of her party's lawmakers on Monday.

For years the knock on Le Pen was that she could fill an arena but never win the last round. A judge almost settled the question for her. Now French voters get to settle it themselves.