this post was submitted on 30 Sep 2024
190 points (100.0% liked)

World News

39142 readers
2783 users here now

A community for discussing events around the World

Rules:

Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.

We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.

All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.


Lemmy World Partners

News !news@lemmy.world

Politics !politics@lemmy.world

World Politics !globalpolitics@lemmy.world


Recommendations

For Firefox users, there is media bias / propaganda / fact check plugin.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-bias-fact-check/

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

PARIS (AP) — French far-right leader Marine Le Pen denied violating any rules as she and her National Rally party and two dozen others went on trial on Monday, accused of embezzling European Parliament funds, in a case that has the potential to derail her political ambitions.

Arriving at the court in Paris, Le Pen said she remained confident as “we have not violated any political and regulatory rules of the European Parliament” and vowed to present the judges with “extremely serious and extremely solid arguments.″

Le Pen and other National Rally members casually greeted each other before sitting down in the first three rows of the packed courtroom.

The nine-week trial will be closely watched by Le Pen’s political rivals as she is a strong contender in the race to succeed Emmanuel Macron when the next presidential election takes place in 2027.

...

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] oce@jlai.lu 26 points 1 month ago

Her argument is that "Parliamentary assistants do not work for the Parliament. They are political assistants to elected officials, political by definition", so basically she says they can do whatever they want with the EU Parliament money if it is the decision of an elected person, which is clearly not the rules for this fund and she knows it.
To make it juicer, they found records of her party members explicitly estimating that they should not do that because it is embezzlement.
For context, this comes from a time when her party wanted Frexit similarly to the Brexit party in the UK, which the same irrational arguments. So misusing EU money was completely aligned with their idea to damage the relation. Turns out, Frexit was very unpopular even within right wing French people, so they pivoted to some kind of small EU now.