Marine Le Pen "must serve her sentence" because she is "a citizen like any other," says Marine Tondelier, the national secretary of Les Écologistes (The Ecologists, the French Greens), after a Paris court rendered Le Pen ineligible to stand for president in 2027 and gave her a four-year prison sentence, half of it suspended, for embezzlement of European parliament funds. Including Le Pen, nine figures from her National Rally (RN) party were convicted over a scheme where they took advantage of European Parliament expenses to employ assistants who were actually working for the party. Le Pen will not serve time in prison. Two years of her sentence was suspended and the other two are to be served outside jail with an electronic bracelet, the court ruled. SOUNDBITES