BRUSSELS
Prosecutors arrived at the European Parliament on Wednesday morning, and by midday the building's worst-kept secret was official: the offices of the Patriots for Europe group — the third-largest bloc in the Parliament — were being searched in Brussels and Strasbourg. Reuters reported that the European Public Prosecutor's Office, known as the EPPO, carried out the searches on Wednesday, October 21, as part of an ongoing investigation into the use of European Union funds by a former political group.
The Patriots group did not wait for the prosecutors to explain. According to Reuters, the group announced the searches itself in a post on X, saying the raids were linked to an embezzlement investigation into the former Identity and Democracy group — the hard-right alliance known as ID, which was dissolved in 2024 and from whose ranks much of the Patriots' membership came. The group's position, stated plainly in its post, is that there is "no legal continuity" between the Patriots and ID, and that the Patriots are not involved in the ongoing investigations. In Brussels terms: the sins, if any, belong to a group that no longer exists, and the new group merely shares its politicians, its parties and, as Wednesday made clear, some of its paperwork.
The EPPO itself was more careful. Reuters reported that the prosecutor's office confirmed searches in France and Belgium connected to its continuing investigation into how a former political group used EU funds, and that the probe was opened in July 2025. Political groups in the European Parliament receive public money to run their operations — staff, research, communications — under rules that prohibit spending it on national party politics or campaigns. The question at the heart of the case is whether millions of euros crossed that line.
Le Monde, which reported on the Strasbourg operation in detail, said France's anti-corruption office carried out the search on the fourth floor of the Louise-Weiss building, in the offices of Philip Claeys, the Patriots' secretary general. Claeys is a Belgian former member of the Vlaams Belang party who previously served as secretary general of the ID group before taking the same job with the Patriots — the human thread connecting the dissolved group to its successor, and evidently a person of interest in the file. Rapporteur reported that Belgian police also raided Claeys's offices in Brussels and that he was questioned; he did not immediately respond to requests for comment, according to Reuters.
The scale of the alleged problem is not small. Rapporteur and Politico, whose reporting was summarized by the Daily Guardian, put the figure at at least 4.3 million euros allegedly spent improperly by the ID group between 2019 and 2024 — through irregular donations and through breaches of tender rules in contracts awarded to friendly companies. That last phrase does a lot of work in Brussels investigations: parliament money is supposed to be spent through competitive procedures, and steering contracts to allies is precisely the kind of quiet, unglamorous misuse that auditors flag and prosecutors pursue.
Wednesday was also not the first knock on the door. The reporting notes earlier raids on June 30 in France, Belgium, Spain and Italy as part of the same widening inquiry. And in 2025, the European Parliament's own finance department ordered the Patriots to repay 276,967 euros for misuse of funds in the second half of 2024, over tender-rule problems similar to those alleged against ID. That detail complicates the group's "that was the old group" defense: the repayment order concerned the Patriots' own spending, in the Patriots' own first months, even if the far larger 4.3 million euro question belongs to the predecessor's era.
The Patriots for Europe, for readers catching up, is not a fringe outfit. It is the third-largest group in the European Parliament, a coalition that includes France's National Rally, Hungary's Fidesz, Spain's Vox, Italy's Lega and Austria's Freedom Party — the organizing home of the continent's ascendant hard right. Its reaction on Wednesday was political as much as legal. Jean-Paul Garraud, who heads the National Rally delegation, revealed the raids on X and called them harassment — the standard first move in a well-worn playbook: recast an investigation as persecution, and let the base draw its own conclusions before the prosecutors draw theirs.
A spokesperson for the European Parliament said the institution is cooperating with the authorities and offered no additional comment, according to the reporting — the institutional equivalent of holding the door and saying nothing. That silence is unlikely to hold the story. Searches of a sitting political group's offices in two parliament seats, in two countries, led by a European prosecutor, are the kind of image that travels: it will be used by the Patriots' opponents as proof of rot and by the Patriots as proof of a rigged system, and both uses were already underway before the officers had finished boxing files.
The timing carries its own charge. Reuters noted the context hanging over the French end of this story: Marine Le Pen, the National Rally's leader, is ahead in the polls for next year's French presidential election. An investigation that touches her movement's European finances — even one formally aimed at a dissolved predecessor group — lands in the middle of a national campaign season whether anyone schedules it that way or not. Expect the words "lawfare" and "accountability" to be deployed in roughly equal volume, in roughly opposite directions, for months.
For now, what is established is narrow and significant: prosecutors searched the Patriots' administrative offices in Brussels and Strasbourg on Wednesday; the EPPO says the case concerns EU funds used by a former political group; the Patriots say that group is not them; and the paper trail — 4.3 million euros in questioned spending, a 276,967 euro repayment order, raids in at least four countries since June — suggests the argument over whose group it really was will be settled by documents, not by posts on X. The boxes leaving the Louise-Weiss building on Wednesday will have their say.
Keep up with the day's world coverage on our news front, including Putin hosting Witkoff in St. Petersburg and the Tesla-SpaceX merger committee story from this morning.
