Marine Le Pen is ironic about a file where “everything is suspect” and calls into question the leadership of the European Parliament

The leader of the RN deputies was called to the bar for the first time, as a representative of the party. She denounced “preconceived ideas” about the “management of a political party”.

The leader of the far right Marine Le Pen was heard for the first time since the opening of the trial in the case of suspicions of fictitious employment of parliamentary assistants of MEPs. Tried before the Paris criminal court alongside 24 other people and the National Rally, she was called to the stand as a representative of the political party, Wednesday October 2, but not as a defendant.

“I am surprised that everything is suspicious in this case”she said in particular. The fact that parliamentary assistants are also party members? “It’s suspicious. But no, it’s logical”. The fact that the National Front is in financial difficulty? “Suspicious. But which party isn’t?”she lists. “Managing a political party is complicated, I hope to convey that to you during these two months”she adds. And to engage in long demonstrations to “explain how a political movement works”addressing in turn the court or the civil party.

“I really have the feeling that in this matter there are a lot of preconceptions, preconceived ideas”also affirmed the leader of the RN deputies. “I have the impression that they were made by the civil party” – the European Parliament, whose RN is “the black beast”she said –, which “has led us into a tunnel a bit like a rodent, a tunnel from which we cannot escape other than by following the tunnel”.

In total, nine former National Front MEPs, including Marine Le Pen, are appearing alongside 12 people who were their parliamentary assistants, and four party collaborators – also on trial. The defendants appear for embezzlement of public funds, concealment or complicity in this crime, and face ten years of imprisonment and a fine of one million euros, as well as a ten-year ineligibility sentence, likely to hinder the Marine Le Pen’s presidential ambitions for 2027.

For the prosecution, which denounces the establishment of a “centralized system” in the party between 2004 and 2016, these parliamentary assistants, hard-pressed to describe their tasks, only had the title. “Political activity is inseparable from the parliamentary mandate, we are not civil servants, we are elected by the people”insisted Marine le Pen in response.