Rassemblement National (RN)

Rassem­ble­ment Nation­al (RN), for­mer­ly known as the Front Nation­al (FN), is a French far-right polit­i­cal par­ty found­ed in 1972 by Jean-Marie Le Pen and cur­rent­ly led by Jor­dan Bardel­la, with Marine Le Pen remain­ing its cen­tral fig­ure. While the par­ty has pur­sued a strat­e­gy of “de-demo­niza­tion” to move from the polit­i­cal fringe to the mainstream—becoming the largest oppo­si­tion force in the French Nation­al Assembly—it remains the sub­ject of intense scruti­ny by nation­al and Euro­pean intel­li­gence bod­ies for its finan­cial and geopo­lit­i­cal align­ments. A 2023 French par­lia­men­tary inquiry, orig­i­nal­ly launched by the RN itself, ulti­mate­ly described the par­ty as a “trans­mis­sion belt” for Russ­ian influ­ence, cit­ing its receipt of a €9.4 mil­lion loan from a Russ­ian bank in 2014 and its con­sis­tent align­ment with Krem­lin for­eign pol­i­cy nar­ra­tives. Fur­ther­more, the orga­ni­za­tion has faced repeat­ed legal action from the Euro­pean Union’s anti-fraud office (OLAF); in March 2025, a Paris crim­i­nal court con­vict­ed Marine Le Pen and near­ly 30 oth­er par­ty offi­cials of embez­zling mil­lions of euros in Euro­pean Par­lia­ment funds, rul­ing that they had sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly divert­ed mon­ey intend­ed for par­lia­men­tary assis­tants to pay for nation­al par­ty staff.

References:

• French par­lia­ment report points to far-right’s spe­cial ties with Rus­sia (Eurac­tiv)
• Marine Le Pen’s con­vic­tion is a win­dow into trans­paren­cy prob­lems in the EU Par­lia­ment (AP News)
• Marine Le Pen tri­al over alleged mis­use of EU funds (The Guardian)
• Nation­al Ral­ly: His­to­ry, Pol­i­cy & Lead­er­ship (Bri­tan­ni­ca)
• OLAF inves­ti­ga­tions into EU funds mis­use in Par­lia­ment feed into Paris ver­dict (Euro­pean Anti-Fraud Office)