The decade-long case of the far-right Rassemblement National (RN) party's fake European parliamentary assistant jobs has only recently been tried, resulting notably in Marine Le Pen's conviction and ban on running for office. Yet now, her party and its allies find themselves at the center of a new scandal concerning the embezzlement of the European Parliament's public funds, an investigation by Le Monde, the German investigative television program Kontraste, the German magazine Die Zeit, and the Austrian weekly newspaper Falter has found.

The now-defunct Identity and Democracy (ID) parliamentary group, which comprised around 10 far-right parties during the last European parliamentary term (2019-2024), is accused of irregular spending practices, to the detriment of the Parliament's budget, amounting to at least €4.33 million – a sum close to the total financial damages caused by the RN's fake parliamentary assistants system (€4.5 million). Much of this money benefited former radical activists with close ties to Le Pen, who were awarded lucrative contracts without any genuine procurement process, as well as organizations often linked to far-right officials or causes.

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