A trial with heavy political stakes for the leader of the far right and her party opens this Monday morning before the Paris criminal court. Marine Le Pen and several members of the former National Front are suspected of having diverted funds from the European Parliament to pay party employees between 2004 and 2016, passing off their positions as those of parliamentary assistants. Beyond a very steep fine, the leader risks a penalty of ineligibility which could slow down her meteoric race towards the presidential election of 2027.
Who is judged?
Marine Le Pen as well as 24 members and ex-members of the National Front (now National Rally) are in the dock. Among the figures best known to the general public, nine former MEPs will appear including Louis Aliot, now vice-president of the RN, the former number 2 of the party Bruno Gollnisch, and the deputy and spokesperson for the RN Julien Odoul. Alongside them, 12 people who were their parliamentary assistants and four party collaborators will also be tried in this trial scheduled for three half-days per week until November 27.
Jean-Marie Le Pen, 96 years old, concerned by the accusations, will not appear, an expertise having determined that he was not “in condition” to be judged for health reasons, like the former MEP Jean -François Jalkh.
What does the case consist of?
The “parliamentary assistants” affair was opened in 2015 by a report from the President of the European Parliament Martin Schulz, and concerns numerous parliamentary attaché contracts over a period of more than ten years (2004-2016). The Paris prosecutor’s office mentioned in September 2023 “a real system put in place to have the European Parliament bear part of the operating costs of the FN by covering the salaries of a growing number of its employees”. This “system”, validated by Jean-Marie Le Pen then his daughter, according to the prosecution, would have accelerated with the entry into Parliament in 2014 of 23 FN MEPs (compared to three previously).
For the prosecution, these “assistants”, struggling to describe their tasks, only had the title. Some had never even met their official employer or set foot in Parliament and, according to the prosecution, only worked for the party – which is prohibited under European regulations. “Marine, would it be possible for me to come to Strasbourg tomorrow to see how a session is going” in Parliament, “and to meet Mylène Troszczynski to whom I am attached?”, wrote Julien Odoul in February 2015, four months after the start of his contract as a parliamentary assistant to Ms. Troszczynski. “Yes of course,” replied Marine Le Pen.
What penalty do the defendants face?
The defendants, tried in particular for embezzlement of public funds or complicity in this offense, face a maximum of ten years of imprisonment and a fine of one million euros. And above all a ten-year ineligibility sentence likely to hamper Marine Le Pen’s presidential ambitions for 2027. “But there is no reason for her to be declared ineligible since François Bayrou, prosecuted for the same facts, president of a political party, was also acquitted, so what applies to one should apply to the other,” assured Sébastien Chenu on RTL this Sunday.
The European Parliament, civil party, estimated its financial damage at three million euros. He will only claim two million, one million having already been reimbursed (which is not an admission of guilt, assured the RN).
What is the RN’s defense?
Most of the defendants contest as a whole, citing a “mutualization” of the work of parliamentary assistants. The RN has been denouncing for years “relentlessness”, even a “political” procedure. “We have nothing to reproach ourselves for in this matter,” declared in The Parisian mid-September Marine Le Pen, 56, saying she wanted to explain at the bar that parliamentary assistants are “not employees of the European Parliament” and are “obviously intended, for a certain number of them, to do policy”.
“It is not a political trial because the judges do not play politics, but it is a political settling of scores by the majority of the European Parliament”, agrees with AFP Me Alexandre Varaut, lawyer and MEP RN .
Will Marine Le Pen be present?
The leader of the RN indicated that she intended to face the judges as much as possible. On Tuesday, however, she could favor the general policy declaration of the new Prime Minister Michel Barnier to the National Assembly. “Marine Le Pen has chosen to be very present in this trial. Some say ‘she will hide, she will not come’. No, not at all. That’s not the style of the house”, assured Sunday on RTL, RN deputy Sébastien Chenu, promising that Marine Le Pen would put forward “a certain number of new elements”.