MEP Nicolas Bay at the appeal trial of the European parliamentary assistants of the Front National, the former name of the Rassemblement National, Paris, January 19, 2026. SERGIO AQUINDO FOR LE MONDE
Nicolas Bay had certainly made progress, but it remained unclear if he had gone far enough. "I've thought about it, I've reflected. I'm not in denial," the member of the European Parliament (MEP) said on Monday, January 19, at the appeal trial for the embezzlement of public funds through fake parliamentary assistants by Marine Le Pen's Rassemblement National party. He eventually conceded, under the relentless questioning of Judge Michèle Agi, that his assistant might have worked "in a gray area" for a period. The half-admission was quickly undermined a few hours later by the assistant himself, who said that, though he was paid by the European Parliament, he had worked "90% of the time" for the party.
Bay was elected as an MEP in May 2014. Well established in his Normandy stronghold, he soon became the party's secretary general and sought to build his team. "I tried to get organized quickly," the defendant said. "I only had a distant and rather theoretical understanding of all this." In Strasbourg and Brussels, he hired one accredited assistant (who was dismissed in 2019, after publication of an antisemitic photo) and three local assistants, all grassroots activists from Normandy, including Timothée Houssin.
