On the primary day of her enchantment trial, Marine Le Pen modifications her line of protection | EUROtoday

Marine Le Pen, adopted as one by her 11 co-defendants, considerably modified her line of protection on the primary day, Tuesday January 13, of the enchantment trial of the European parliamentary assistants of the National Front (FN), which turned the National Rally (RN) in 2018.

There is now not any query of contesting the legitimacy of the courtroom within the title of the separation of powers, of denying any offense, or of guaranteeing that the assistants solely did one factor. “political work” for his or her deputies, in Paris or Strasbourg, and that it was not for the European Parliament to determine.

This technique, adopted at first occasion, didn’t repay: on March 31, 2025, the judges dominated that Marine Le Pen, like most of her co-defendants, had misappropriated European public funds by paying parliamentary assistants who had been in actuality assigned, based on the investigation, to different duties. A conviction which earned M^me Le Pen a jail sentence accompanied by 5 years of ineligibility, with provisional execution.

“If a crime has been committed – and everyone seems to say that a crime has been committed – I want to hear itsaid the member for Pas-de-Calais before the court of appeal. But I want the court to know that as far as we are concerned, she continued, we did not feel like we had committed the slightest crime when in 2004, 2009, then in 2014, we hired our own assistants and then shared these assistants. » “It is already recognizing that there was a crime”noticed Patrick Maisonneuve, the lawyer for the European Parliament, after the listening to.

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