Three Front National MEPs, including the former leader of the party, Jean-Marie Le Pen, have been ordered by a European court to pay more than €600,000 (£510,000) in total to the European parliament over alleged misuse of funds.

The MEPs had asked the general court of the EU to stop the European parliament docking their pay and expenses, after officials claimed last year that they had inappropriately been claiming salaries for assistants in Brussels.

Le Pen, whose estranged daughter Marine is the current leader of the Front National and a frontrunner in France’s presidential election, is facing the prospect of having €320,026 taken back by the European parliament.

Bruno Gollnisch MEP, a former academic who was convicted in 2007 of Holocaust denial, is set to pay €275,984 for inappropriately claiming a salary for an assistant between 2011 and 2015. Mylène Troszczynski, a Front National MEP for the north-west of France since 2014, is due to pay €56,554.

All three continue to deny any wrongdoing but also claimed to the court that having their allowances and expenses docked would leave them unable to carry out their duties as MEPs.

In a ruling published on Thursday morning, the court said that all three members had not proven that the recovery of the money by the parliament would affect their ability to carry out their duties. It said: “The president of the general court concludes that, in the absence of urgency, it is not necessary to suspend the operation of the contested decisions.”



Jean-Marie Le Pen has recently been charged with inciting religious hatred for alleged antisemitic remarks. The charge concerns a video posted on the party’s website in June 2014 where he attacked his critics, including the French singer and former tennis player Yannick Noah, Patrick Bruel, a French singer and actor of Jewish descent, and Madonna.

Marine Le Pen refuses to repay €300k of 'misspent' EU funds Read more

When asked about Bruel, Le Pen said he would be part of “a batch we will get next time”, using the word “fournée” for “batch”. Authorities interpreted the comment as a pun on the word “four”, meaning “oven”. Le Pen denies any wrongdoing.

Marine Le Pen has also recently been ordered to pay back almost €298,000 to the European parliament due to claims similar to those levelled at her father and others, that she had been paying the salaries of officials working in France through EU funds. If she refuses to comply and repay the money, her allowances and expenses will also be docked.

She formally launched her presidential campaign on Sunday, pledging to put France first by freeing it it from the “tyrannies” of globalisation, Islamic fundamentalism and the European Union.

While she is comfortably ahead in the polls for the first round of voting in the coming election, the latest surveys suggest that Emmanuel Macron would beat her 62% to 38% in a runoff.