France's far-right party National Rally probed for embezzlement of EU funds

A series of searches were carried out as part of a European probe into the alleged embezzlement of EU funds targeting France's far-right National Rally, France 24 reported on 2 July.

According to the France 24 account, the searches targeted the far-right group in the European Parliament in which Jordan Bardella once sat, with European justice authorities said to be keeping a close eye on the party. Bardella has denounced the operation as judicial persecution. Corroborating coverage from OCCRP, the investigative reporting consortium, describes the EU prosecutor raiding a far-right European Parliament group over alleged fraud.

The matter stands at the investigative stage. On the record: the searches, the subject of the probe — alleged embezzlement of EU funds — and Bardella's denunciation. Not on the record in the material supplied: any charges, the sums at issue, or the identities of individuals under formal investigation.

Background

The European Public Prosecutor's Office, operational since 2021, is the EU body charged with investigating and prosecuting crimes against the bloc's financial interests, including fraud and misuse of EU budget funds; it can conduct searches and bring cases in the courts of participating member states. Political groups in the European Parliament receive substantial EU funding for staff and operations, on the strict condition that the money is used for parliamentary work — a line whose alleged crossing has generated cases against parties across the political spectrum.

For the National Rally, the probe lands on well-trodden ground: the party's legal exposure over European Parliament money predates this investigation, most prominently in the separate French case over the misuse of parliamentary assistant funds that produced convictions of senior party figures, including Marine Le Pen, in 2025. Bardella, the party's president and its lead figure in successive European election campaigns, sat as a member of the European Parliament before entering front-line national politics, which is how his name attaches to the group now searched.

What comes next

The procedural fork is whether the EU prosecutor's investigation matures into charges — which would require identifying individuals, specifying sums, and bringing the case before national courts — or closes without action. Watch for the EPPO formally confirming the scope of the probe, the parliamentary group named in the searches responding, and the party's legal strategy beyond Bardella's public denunciation.