Marine Le Pen pleads “good faith”, on the second day of her interrogation | EUROtoday

On the second day of her interrogation, Marine Le Pen pleaded, Wednesday January 21, “good faith” of the National Front (FN), through the attraction trial in Paris of the parliamentary assistants of MEPs. “Why do we, who are rigorous people, seem to have demonstrated, in the way this file is presented, a total lack of rigor? Because we were completely in good faith”argued the chief of the far proper on Wednesday morning.

Justice accuses him, in addition to the National Rally (RN) – previously FN – and ten different executives, of paying between 2004 and 2016 workers of the social gathering, which was then going by monetary difficulties attributable to poor electoral outcomes, with cash from the European Parliament.

Before the court docket of attraction, the president of the RN deputies, at the moment ineligible and who’s enjoying through the trial her candidacy for the 2027 presidential election, maintains that if the social gathering with the flame dedicated an offense, it was under no circumstances intentional, blaming the administration of the European Parliament.

Certainly, she concedes, “reproaches can undoubtedly be made to us”. But the issues linked to the employment of parliamentary assistants come up, based on her, from a lack of know-how and management of the Community establishment, as a result of “the administration of the European Parliament was much smoother than it is today”.

“We were condemned to a tribunitian function”

For Marine Le Pen, the political exercise of parliamentary assistants resulted from “sanitary cordon” arrange towards the far-right formation within the European hemicycle. “The objective was to prohibit an FN deputy from having the slightest mission within a committee. (…) We were somewhat condemned to a tribunitian function”she mentioned, wearing a navy blue go well with.

For the member for Pas-de-Calais, the time that has handed for the reason that occasions makes “extremely difficult to prove his innocence”whereas the court docket of attraction dissects one after the other the completely different parliamentary assistant contracts linked to her mandate as MEP. “I don’t know how to prove to you what I can’t prove to you, what I have to prove to you”she lastly acquired irritated.

On March 31, 2025, the Paris felony court docket declared her responsible and notably sentenced her to 5 years of ineligibility with provisional execution, stopping her from working within the subsequent presidential election. A clap of thunder in the meanwhile when the potential candidate was on the high of the voting intentions for the primary spherical. His interrogation is scheduled to proceed Wednesday afternoon.