Marine Le Pen, the long-time leader of France's far-right National Rally party (RN), stood trial in a Paris criminal court on Monday alongside 26 others and the RN itself over alleged misappropriation of European Union funds.
If found guilty, Ms Le Pen, 56, runs the risk of being barred from public office for 10 years, meaning she could not take part in the 2027 presidential election. She lost to Emmanuel Macron in the second round of the 2017 and 2022 elections.
“We have not broken any rules,” the three-times presidential candidate said before the hearings in Paris, adding she was “very calm”.
Latest French opinion polls show Ms Le Pen, who was re-elected to the French Parliament in June, would lead the first round of the presidential election were it held today.
At the opening of the trial in the north of Paris, she declined to publicly state her address to the court on security reasons. However, Ms Le Pen, a lawyer by training, told the presiding judge: “I will answer all the questions that you will ask me.”
Ms Le Pen rejects accusations of having embezzled EU funds by using them to pay parliamentary assistants who were instead working as employees of her political party, at the time called the National Front.
The name change came as part of a successful effort to clean up the far-right party's reputation that suffered from anti-Semitic statements made by its founder and Ms Le Pen's father, Jean-Marie Le Pen.
“The only question that is being asked is: were some of our collaborators and MEPs allowed or not to work in liaison with the political party? We say that they were allowed to do so,” RN MEP Alexandre Varaut told reporters.
Mr Varaut accused prominent socialists such as former justice minister Christian Taubira and ex-European Parliament president Martin Schulz, a German politician, of trying “to stop the inexorable rise of the RN.”
“We find this case particularly unfair,” said Mr Varaut.
“Everyone knew that for decades all political parties had collaborators – a small number of them – who also worked with political parties. This was public knowledge and it was not illegal.”
Marine Le Pen through the years – in pictures
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French far-right politician and president of the National Front, Jean-Marie Le Pen, with his wife Pierrette Lalanne and daughter Marine Le Pen, attend a demonstration in Paris in September 1982. All photos: Getty Images -
Jean-Marie Le Pen with his daughters Yann, Marine and Marie-Caroline in Saint-Cloud, France, in 1986. -
Jean-Marie Le Pen with daughter Marine after the first round of voting in the 1995 French presidential election. -
Marine Le Pen salutes party members, with her father to the right, as she is named Front National's new leader at a party conference in January 2011. -
Marine Le Pen delivers a speech during the party's annual celebration of Joan of Arc in May 2011 in Paris. -
Marine Le Pen after giving a speech during the far-right party's May Day demonstration in Paris in 2012. -
Marine Le Pen votes during her party's congress in March 2018 at the Grand Palais in Lille. -
Marine Le Pen and former US president Donald Trump's adviser, Steve Bannon, give a joint press conference at the Front National party's annual congress in March 2018. -
Marine Le Pen at a meeting of populist far-right party leaders at Wenceslas Square in Prague, Czech Republic, in April 2019. -
Marine Le Pen launches her presidential campaign in Reims, France, in February. -
Marine Le Pen poses with supporters as she leaves a polling station in Henin-Beaumont after casting her ballot for the second round of the presidential elections.
Mr Le Pen, aged 96, was excused due to poor health from the trial, which comes almost a decade after initial investigations started and is scheduled to end on November 27. It also involves nine former MEPs including Ms Le Pen and party vice president Louis Aliot, spokesman Julien Odoul, one of nine former parliamentary assistants, and four RN staff. Current party head Jordan Bardella used to work in such an assistant role but is not on trial.
A National Front organisational chart published in 2015 appeared to show a number of parliamentary assistants worked for the party. EU politicians are allocated funds to cover expenses, including their assistants, but are not meant to use them to finance party activities.
The European Parliament has estimated the damage at €3.5 million ($3.92 million), its lawyer said. The RN has already paid back €1 million, which it says is not an admission of guilt.
Evidence for the prosecution includes contracts for periods as short as a single day to squeeze every last cent out of spending allowances. One message from party treasurer Wallerand de Saint-Just warned of the party's disastrous finances, saying, “We won't get out of this without making significant savings thanks to the European Parliament”.
Prosecutors say the assistants in fact worked exclusively for the party outside Parliament. Many were unable to describe their day-to-day work and some had never met their supposed MEP boss or set foot in the Parliament building. A bodyguard, a secretary, Ms Le Pen's chief of staff and a graphic designer were all allegedly hired under false pretences.
RN party spokesman Laurent Jacobelli told Reuters last week that Ms Le Pen was not worried about the trial. “She knows that what we are accused of is having a different understanding, as a French party, of what an assistant role is, compared with the European Parliament's understanding,” he said.
The RN is under another preliminary investigation, launched in July by the Paris prosecutor's office, into alleged illegal financing of its 2022 presidential campaign.
