PARIS — As Marine Le Pen awaits a verdict that will determine her political future, her chosen successor, Jordan Bardella, faces a legal problem of his own.
Just a week before a court ruling that could make Bardella his party’s presidential candidate, police raided contractors who worked for the party’s group in the European Parliament before it was dissolved in 2024.
While the 30-year-old leader of the far-right National Rally is not accused of wrongdoing, the raids are part of a snowballing investigation into what the Parliament says is a pattern of irregular expenses.
The case also sheds light on the National Rally’s continued business ties to figures close to extremist circles, potentially undermining the party’s effort to detoxify its image ahead of the 2027 French presidential election.
Bardella and his allies have denounced the raids — carried out at the behest of the European Public Prosecutor’s Office — as another episode in what they describe as a long-standing political vendetta by French judges and EU institutions as the party moves closer to power.
“As always, legal proceedings foreshadow the election calendar,” Bardella said in a post on X as the raids were being carried out. “We have nothing to be ashamed of, and we will prove it.”
Bardella said: “We have nothing to be ashamed of, and we will prove it.” | Bastien Ohier, Hans Lucas/AFP via Getty ImagesAleksandar Nikolic, an MEP and spokesperson for the National Rally, described the new allegations as an “instrumentalization” of justice and the Parliament’s rules, arguing that other Parliamentary groups were not subject to the same scrutiny. “We can see there is a double standard,” he told POLITICO.
The EPPO is investigating a finding by the Parliament that the since-dissolved Identity and Democracy group broke spending rules on €4.3 million during the 2019-2024 term. The National Rally was a member of the group until it ended in 2024.
The Parliament has also found that Bardella’s new group, the Patriots of Europe, allegedly misspent nearly €280,000 in the second half of 2024, according to an internal Parliament report seen by POLITICO.
For the 2025 financial year, the Parliament is still examining the group’s accounts, according to an official familiar with the matter. However, the Patriots are expected to be ordered to repay a further €545,754.09 over similar breaches, according to an internal report from the Parliament’s department of finance sent to the institution’s budgetary control committee, seen by POLITICO and reported here for the first time.
The Prosecutor’s office confirmed last week’s raids, first reported by Le Monde, saying it was “conducting investigative measures in France and other European countries as part of an ongoing investigation into the use of European funds by a former political group.”
‘Due diligence’
The alleged irregular spending falls into two main categories. First, the group made donations of €100 to €1,800 to local and regional organizations at the request of individual MEPs, which the Parliament says weren’t related to political or policy issues relevant to the group’s work.
Beneficiaries included a Martinique-based futsal club, a tennis club in Guadeloupe, and a Guadeloupean quad-bike organization — located in two French overseas territories where Le Pen’s party has made recent breakthroughs. Their activities “are unrelated to the [Patriots] Group’s political or information activities,” the Parliament said in its audit report.
The second category concerned public procurement. According to the Parliament’s administration, several tender procedures breached procurement rules; shortcomings were identified in how the tenders were designed and documented, how bids were evaluated, and how contracts were awarded.
“There was a clear intention to work with particular companies (which prosecutors might characterize as the criminal offence of favoritism), and that the tender procedures were merely pro forma,” a Parliament official said.
The Patriots group has denied any wrongdoing. “No evidence has been established of misuse of funds, conflict of interest, or intentional circumvention of the rules,” the group’s Secretary General Philip Claeys wrote in a letter to the Parliament’s finance department on April 20.
Of the money Identity and Democracy spent during the last legislative term, €3.6 million went to two comms firms, e-Politic and Unanime, both linked at the time to Frédéric Chatillon, a figure from French extremist circles and a longtime friend of Marine Le Pen. Of that, some € 3.1 million was spent irregularly, according to the Parliament’s finance department. Le Pen pledged to cut ties with Chatillon after he openly supported a neo-fascist march in Paris three years ago.
The Parliament is also examining links between four other companies that worked for the Patriots in the current parliamentary term and the network of activists behind e-Politic and Unanime. “The economic operators invited to tender and submitting offers show indications of interconnections involving individuals close to the political party [the National Rally],” the finance department wrote in one of its reports. “These elements raise questions as to the effective independence of the bidders.”
Le Pen will find out on July 7 whether an appeals court will clear the way for her to run in next year’s presidential election. | Simon Wohlfahrt/AFP via Getty ImagesE-Politic did not reply to a request for comment. POLITICO was unable to reach Chatillon or a representative for Unanime.
The case began when the Parliament’s finance department, carrying out a final audit after Identity and Democracy was dissolved, revisited the group’s tender procedures and contracts. Its finding of millions in irregular expenditures prompted the EPPO to open an investigation.
“Whenever a group ceases to exist, the Parliament is responsible for settling the group’s outstanding legal and financial obligations — a due diligence review is therefore conducted to verify the accuracy, correctness and completeness of the financial data provided,” the Parliament’s press service said in a statement.
After Identity and Democracy ceased to exist, many of its staff and suppliers moved to the newly created Patriots group, prompting the Parliament to examine whether similar spending practices had continued.
‘No evidence’
In his April 20 letter, Claeys, the National Rally’s secretary general, said the initial findings from spring 2025 on Identity and Democracy’s spending had prompted the Patriots to stop making donations and to suspend some procurement procedures identified as problematic — though the group hasn’t stopped working with e-Politic.
Claeys also said that the shortcomings identified were systemic rather than unique to his party, and called for the same level of scrutiny to be applied to all political groups.
“Since a number of months the Patriots Group has been revising and fine-tuning its working methods regarding tendering procedures,” said Claeys. “As a matter of precaution, some contracts have been suspended in December 2025.”
In an unpublished 2025 audit report seen by POLITICO, the European Court of Auditors said the European Parliament had failed to fully implement recommendations to strengthen oversight and enforcement of rules governing political group spending, citing procurement breaches in contracts awarded by one group. It did not specify which group.
Claeys also explained the choice of contractors by suggesting it wasn’t easy to find companies willing to work with the group.
“Companies performing professional activities at a fair price and completing high-quality assignments cannot be excluded from being bidders, particularly given that potential candidates willing to work for a political group is limited,” he wrote.
An official from Bardella’s office also pointed to the sourcing issue.
“We put out these calls for tenders, send them to lots of companies, and regularly get responses saying, ‘There’s no way we’d work with you. We don’t share the same values,’ that sort of thing,” said the official, who was granted anonymity to speak candidly.