Rassemblement National (RN) leader Jordan Bardella is to be the subject of an investigation by the European Public Prosecutor’s Office (EPPO) concerning media training courses he attended in 2022, on suspicion of fraud involving European Union funds. The investigation was launched after French national prosecutors forwarded to EPPO a complaint filed in France last year.
The opening of the probe comes at a crucial time, as the launch of the presidential election campaign draws near. RN has dismissed the allegations as unfounded, maintaining it has done nothing wrong.
It all started in December 2025, when a French association, AC Corruption, filed a complaint against Jordan Bardella with the National Financial Prosecutor’s Office, based on information provided by the satirical newspaper Le Canard Enchaîné, published in late November 2025. The association accuses him of having paid for a training course delivered by media specialist Pascal Humeau during the 2022 presidential campaign with European Parliament funding to the tune of €130,000. Bardella announced that he would in turn file a complaint for defamation against the association, convinced he had done nothing wrong in this matter.
On the French side, the opening of the investigation in January 2026 coincided exactly with the start of Marine Le Pen’s appeal trial in the European parliamentary assistants’ case—as if to weigh down the case against France’s leading party.
In early May, the European prosecutor’s office took over the French investigation “following a verification phase.” In a statement on Thursday, May 7th, the RN contested the allegations made against it. “These ‘media training’ sessions were conducted in accordance with European Parliament rules, approved by the European Parliament’s services, on European issues, for several MEPs from the RN delegation for the 2019–2024 term, including Jordan Bardella,” the statement read. The party points out that the training ended at the start of the 2022 presidential campaign, in order to avoid any ambiguity.
On May 8th, Marine Le Pen denounced in a radio interview the “excesses” and “insults” of the anti-corruption association behind the investigation. She stated that her party would willingly comply with the European public prosecutor’s office’s requests for investigations she described as “perfectly natural.”
MP Philippe Ballard, the party’s spokesman, confirmed to the press that the RN was not concerned about the enquiry. He pointed out that everything had been approved at European level at the time, and that the association behind the complaint was well known for its anti-RN activism. Whilst journalists are reporting the accusation that the media training did not focus exclusively on European issues, Ballard dismisses these objections out of hand: “When we conduct media training, the range of questions asked does indeed cover European politics and French politics. There are obviously links between the two. When we talk about agriculture, when we talk about industry, when we talk about energy, we are talking at the European level. And then, of course, this has consequences for every country in the European Union,” he explained.
Within the RN, there is no doubt whatsoever that the machinery has been set in motion to discredit the man who stands every chance of being the candidate for the presidential election, credited with over 30% of voting intentions. “The closer we get to the summit, the less breathing space there will be,” summarised Ballard.
