French court clears way for Marine Le Pen presidential run

**Valerie Sanderson** (0:00)
This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Valerie Sanderson, and at 14h's GMT on Tuesday, July 7, these are our main stories. Will Marine Le Pen lead France's anti-immigration national rally party into next year's presidential election after a court ruling in Paris? NATO leaders gather in Turkey as Ukraine appeals for more support. Damascus is hit by explosions while President Macron is there.
Also in this podcast, Kyiv's intelligence service say they found the body of a woman wanted over the attempted assassination in Monaco a week ago of a Ukrainian oligarch.
We start in France where a court has cleared the way for Marine Le Pen, the leader of the far-right national rally party, to run for president, but has ordered her to wear an electronic tag. The judge upheld her conviction on embezzlement charges, sentencing her to three years of imprisonment with two suspended and one with the tag. Our correspondent Hugh Schofield, who was at the court in Paris, told us more.

**Hugh Schofield** (1:10)
She, juridically, in the law can run. The case seems to be that the judges have given a more lenient sentence than a year ago, and in this sentence, the key question of how long she will be barred from public office has been reduced from five years in the original sentence, which would have ruled her out completely from running next year, to 45 months with 30 suspended. Take away 30 from 45, you get 15
15 has already elapsed since that judgment at the end of March last year, so her period of ineligibility is over. So juridically, she can now run. Yippee, if you're one of her camp. But, and there is a big but here, another part of the sentence is the jail term part. No one is talking of going to jail. Technically, it's called the jail term. It would be served in at the home with an electronic tag. This part of her sentence is one year. It's been confirmed by this court. It would be served at home with an electronic tag.
Technically means she could still run, but she herself personally has said, I will not run if I am prevented from acting like a normal candidate, going about my business, going to rallies, going to meetings without having to ask permission from the police if I can leave my home. So, theoretically, yes, she can run, but under her own terms, her own conditions that she set herself, she can't run. So we need to wait to understand what the reaction of the party will be.
She and Jordan Bardella, I'm sure, will be meeting quite soon to thrash things out. My hunch is that still she will step down because this electronic tag thing is a condition she set, but who knows? It may be that because this court, the appeal court, has made a more lenient sentence, has moved in her direction, they may decide to rethink it and wonder whether it might not, after all, be possible for her to run next year. We'll know in the coming hours.

**Valerie Sanderson** (3:11)
And reminders about Jordan Bardella, he is the heir apparent, isn't he?

**Hugh Schofield** (3:17)
Yes, and he is the person waiting in the wings who is ready to step into Marine Le Pen's shoes, if this episode turns out in a way which prevents her from running. If they decide that, yes, it's impossible for Marine Le Pen to go ahead with the campaign because she can't operate normally as a candidate with an electronic tag, then yes, there is his Plan B, 30-year-old Jordan Bardella. They are very, very close. He's utterly loyal to her. They say they are a team that is unbreakable.
All that will be tested, of course, in the months ahead of the campaign if he is the candidate. But right now, they say it's not a problem if Marine Le Pen can't run because we have Plan B, B is in Bardella.

**Valerie Sanderson** (4:00)
Hugh Schofield in Paris.
This year's NATO summit is underway in Turkey with a very warm welcome from Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. President Trump had this to say.

**Donald Trump** (4:10)
I was very disappointed with NATO.
And frankly, if it weren't held in Turkey, where my friend happens to be a very strong leader, it's possible that I wouldn't have attended. We've invested trillions of dollars in NATO. And I say that's fine. But you would think that they'd be very willing to do something to help us. And they really weren't.

**Valerie Sanderson** (4:37)
The issue of defense spending has long dominated his conversations with America's European allies. The president continues to warn of consequences if they don't ramp up military spending to 5% of GDP by 2035