“The affair of the fictitious parliamentary assistants reveals the ordinary functioning of the National Rally”

by time news

2024-10-04 04:00:21

VTwenty-five elected representatives of the National Rally (RN) appeared from 30 September to 27 November before the Paris court in the case of the so-called “fictitious assistants” of the National Front (FN, ancestor of the RN) in the European Parliament. Two other defendants, including Jean-Marie Le Pen, will be tried later if their health allows. Only the sentence of the Paris court will allow a ruling on their guilt. However, this case, the scale of which is unprecedented compared to other financial frauds committed in other parties, reveals more generally the ordinary internal organization of the RN, as well as its relationship with justice.

Read also | Affair of the FN’s parliamentary assistants: understanding all that is at stake in the process that opened in Paris

Since the 1980s, the European Parliament has allowed FN leaders to earn a living through politics: the presidents (Jean-Marie Le Pen, Marine Le Pen, Jordan Bardella), the general delegate (Bruno Mégret), the general secretaries (Carl Lang, Louis Aliot, Nicolas Bay). Expatriates in Brussels, they form a not entirely homogeneous leadership group with the other elected members of the party.

Thus, the main leaders impose their choice on the teams of other deputies: the latter were forced to engage only in the recruitment of one assistant (and to let the party recruit the other member of the team). These leaders are mainly Members of the European Parliament, but also their advisors and relatives who are not included in the FN/RN organizational chart and who sometimes benefit from a parliamentary assistant position.

“Court Society”

To use the expression of Safia Dahani in her doctoral thesis “An institutionalization in tradition: sociology of a historical party, the National Front”, defended in 2022, in turn borrowed from the sociologist Norbert Elias, the RN is a “court society” hierarchical in which dominant leaders impose largely informal rules of the game and assume loyalty and obedience from other leaders. Testimonies from MEPs from different periods in the party’s history tell of the use of decision-making outside of formal meetings. Even members of the political bureau say they have not discussed these hires: They therefore do not have the same power as some high-ranking leaders.

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For the administration of the European Parliament, it is the MEPs who employ the parliamentary collaborators. It is the elected representatives who establish the rank of the members of their parliamentary group, and therefore the amount of the salary, sharing the allocation intended for these expenses. The European Parliament’s human resources services stated in 2014 that parliamentary assistants, all groups combined, receive between €1,694.21 and €7,802.33.

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