Behind the RN's calls for tender, suspicions of favoritism and amateurism

Marine Le Pen wants to make it clear: she is not concerned by the new affair threatening the National Rally (RN) in the European Parliament . This is, in any case, what she replied on Thursday, July 3 on RTL, when asked about the confidential report revealed by Le Monde and its German and Austrian partners. "I did not chair this group, I was not secretary general of this group," she said, implicitly shifting the responsibility onto the RN's allied parties, who held these functions at the time of the events with which she is accused.

The report, which has yet to be presented to the European Parliament's Budgetary Control Committee, accuses the former RN group in the assembly, Identity and Democracy (ID), of having unduly allocated €4.3 million since 2019, either in the form of flawed calls for tenders or in the form of donations to associations, deemed illicit by the institution.

"There may be administrative disagreements with the European Parliament, we will try to resolve them," Marine Le Pen downplayed, before repeating the far-right group's defense – the audit of the group's accounts over the past five years had revealed no irregularities – and placing the battle on the political front. "I start from the principle that the European Parliament, which is a political body, has been waging trench warfare against its opposition for years."

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