French far-right leader Marine Le Pen’s bid for next year’s presidential election remained uncertain on Tuesday after a Paris appeals court sentenced her to a year of house arrest with electronic tags and upheld a ban on holding public office in the European Parliament linked to a fake jobs scandal.The appeals court found Le Pen guilty in a fake jobs scandal involving the European Parliament, but reduced her sentence from an earlier ruling. He was banned from public office for 15 months and sentenced to a year under house arrest with an electronic tag.The ban, which lasts until March 2025, is expected to expire later this year, potentially allowing the 57-year-old National Rally (RN) leader to contest presidential elections scheduled for April and May 2027. However, Le Pen has said that she would not contest the election if the sentence prevented her from campaigning effectively.Last year a lower court sentenced Le Pen to a five-year ban from public office and two years in prison, jeopardizing the three-time presidential candidate’s hopes of succeeding outgoing President Emmanuel Macron.Le Pen is expected to announce later on Tuesday whether she will join the presidential race or hand the National Rally candidacy over to party president Jordan Bardella, 30.“I am not afraid,” Le Pen said last week. “If I can run, I’ll run–as long as I can campaign.”Le Pen finished third in France’s 2012 presidential election, before reaching runoffs against Macron in both 2017 and 2022.The case centers on allegations that Le Pen, National Rally and several party officials misused European Parliament funds by employing party staff in France between 2004 and 2016 using funds intended for parliamentary assistants.The original trial found Le Pen guilty of running the scheme along with 24 former European MPs, aides, accountants and the party itself. Le Pen has said that the national rally was the victim of a “witch hunt”, while judges involved in the case reportedly received death threats.Le Pen, the party and 10 others appealed the decision. During the appeal, he denied that National Rally had operated a system to embezzle European Parliament funds and said that the party acted in “complete good faith”.Prosecutors argued that after taking over the leadership of the party in 2011, Le Pen allegedly “professionalized” the system introduced under her father, National Rally co-founder Jean-Marie Le Pen. He had sought to retain the five-year ban and requested a four-year prison sentence with three years suspended.Despite their legal troubles, recent opinion polls have shown that the far right is likely to come out on top in the first round of next year’s presidential election. Polls remain divided on the outcome of the runoff, with some indicating that Bardella may perform slightly better than Le Pen, while others see Le Pen as a strong challenger.Hard-left leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon has said, “This woman is very intelligent, she did not get here by chance. And even if she runs for a fourth time, she will not be an opponent we can ridicule.”A Harris Interactive Toluna poll conducted in May projected that if Le Pen were allowed to contest, she would win against Mélenchon as well as centrist former prime ministers Gabriel Attal and Edouard Philippe. However, other opinion polls have suggested that Philip could defeat the far-right candidate in the second round of voting.