Under fire from the lawyers of Marine Le Pen and the Rassemblement national (RN), the European Parliament spent a long time on Thursday defending itself against any “lack of clarity” in its rules, at the appeal trial that is decisive for the 2027 presidential election, for which the leader of the French far right is currently ineligible.
Paris – “The Parliament is the victim of a system under which certain assistants to FN (Front National later became RN, editor’s note) MEPs in fact worked for the benefit of the party,” declared the Director-General for Finance of the EP, Didier Klethi, before the Paris Court of Appeal.
From the opening of the hearing on Tuesday, Marine Le Pen focused her defense on an alleged failure of the administration of the European Parliament, which she said had not played its “warning role” regarding the disputed contracts.
“We had no feeling that we had committed the slightest offense,” she maintained.
The various defense lawyers question the lack of controls by the EP administration and the complexity of its rules.
“We must not take refuge behind a lack of clarity. The same argument has been made time and again and the Court of Justice (of the European Union) has repeated and repeated in its rulings that the rule is clear enough,” replied Didier Klethi. (15 January 2026)
