EU prosecutors stage raids in four countries in €4.3m funds probe into defunct far-right parliament group

The European Public Prosecutor's Office (EPPO), the EU's Luxembourg-based prosecution service, carried out coordinated searches in France, Spain, Italy and Belgium on Tuesday as part of its investigation into the suspected misuse of roughly €4.3 million in European Parliament funds by Identity and Democracy (ID), the far-right group that housed France's Rassemblement National, Italy's Lega and Germany's AfD until its dissolution in 2024.

The office said in a statement that it was carrying out "investigative measures in France and other European countries as part of an ongoing investigation into the use of EU funds by a former political group of the European Parliament between 2019 and 2024". It did not name the group, but multiple outlets, including Euronews and AFP, identified it as ID, and the searches targeted offices and private homes of communications service providers that worked with the group and its member parties.

Jordan Bardella, president of the Rassemblement National (RN) and head of Patriots for Europe — the successor grouping that is now the third-largest force in the Parliament — confirmed the French searches in a post on X on Tuesday evening.

"Since early this morning, searches have been underway at the offices and private homes of communications service providers who have worked with us," Bardella wrote.

The RN denies any wrongdoing and has said it will demonstrate its innocence. When the investigation was announced last year, Bardella dismissed it as "a new harassment operation by the European Parliament". No one has been charged, and all those concerned are presumed innocent.

What the Parliament's auditors flagged

The EPPO formally opened the case in July 2025 after an internal European Parliament audit of the ID group's accounts identified suspected financial irregularities across the 2019–2024 legislature. According to the internal report, first detailed by Le Monde and the specialist bulletin Agence Europe in July 2025, the alleged irregularities total about €4.33 million, in two strands:

Around €700,000 in donations to associations with no connection to the group's activities or the Parliament's remit;

Around €3.6 million in breaches of procurement rules on communications contracts awarded to private service providers.

Reporting by Euronews and the OCCRP describes the allegations as covering inflated and fictitious contracts and irregular tendering, with money flowing to companies close to the group. The Parliament said at the time that it was "premature at this stage to react" and that the process of closing the dissolved group's accounts was still under way.

AFP reported that a complaint by the campaign group AC!! Anti-Corruption also alleged that group funds paid for a media coach hired from September 2021 to prepare Bardella for a French presidential race rather than for European parliamentary work — a claim the party contests as part of its broader denial.

A dissolved group, but live political stakes

Identity and Democracy was formed after the 2019 European elections as the home of Europe's nationalist right. The AfD was expelled in mid-2024, and the group itself was wound up after that June's elections, with most of its parties regrouping under the Patriots for Europe banner. Because the alleged irregularities concern the group's own budget — money the Parliament allocates to political groups for staff, communications and events — the dissolved structure's former member parties remain exposed to the investigation's findings.

The probe lands at a delicate moment for the RN in particular. In a separate case in March 2025, a Paris court convicted Marine Le Pen, the party and more than 20 associates of misappropriating EU parliamentary-assistant funds, imposing on Le Pen a five-year ban from public office that she has appealed; according to Euronews, the appeal ruling on that ban is expected within days. Bardella, her designated successor should the ban stand, has framed the new searches as judicially timed pressure on his movement, while prosecutors stress the case concerns the group's finances, not the electoral calendar.

Luxembourg's prosecutor as the EU's financial watchdog

The case is run from Luxembourg, where the EPPO has been headquartered in the Kirchberg European district since it became operational in June 2021. The office — led by European Chief Prosecutor Laura Codruța Kövesi, whom the Council has appointed Andrés Ritter to succeed from 1 November 2026 — is the first EU body empowered to investigate and prosecute crimes against the Union's budget, from VAT carousels to subsidy fraud, through delegated prosecutors in participating member states.

That architecture is what allowed a single investigation to trigger simultaneous searches in four countries this week. It also makes the ID case a test with few precedents: an EU-level prosecutor examining how a European Parliament political group — rather than an individual MEP or national party — spent the public money it received, at a time when the parties concerned are among the strongest polling forces in France, Italy and Germany. Whether the case ends in charges or is closed, its handling will shape how credibly Brussels and Luxembourg can claim to police the EU's own political finances.

The EPPO has not indicated a timeline for concluding the investigation.