The Socialists and Democrats in the European Parliament are outraged by the findings of the misuse of public funds by the former Identity and Democracy Group (ID), many of whose members and staff belong now to the Patriots for Europe Group. According to an investigation by the European Parliament’s Directorate-General for Finance (DG FINS), the now dissolved ID Group misused at least €4,333,635.78 from the budget allocated to the group in the period 2019-2024.

Carla Tavares, S&D coordinator in the European Parliament's committee on budgetary control, said:

"The findings of DG FINS are one more blatant example of how some use patriotism as a disguise to favour illicit enrichment of connected individuals and organisations. We saw it in many cases, like that of Marine Le Pen in France. We see it now again in the European institutions thanks to the thorough work of DG FINS that detected the irregularities. The far right in the European Parliament changed its name but not its habits to divert money from European taxpayers.

"This has to stop. The amount of misused expenditures returned to the budget of the European Parliament and potential liabilities of responsible members and the hierarchy of their secretariat have to be assessed. Many of the former members of the ID Group were re-elected and sit among us in the European Parliament as members of the Patriots for Europe Group with a voice on the future of Europe – this is highly regrettable. All irregularities have to be made clear to the public, and the guilty ones have to bear legal consequences for their actions.

"The amount and nature of irregularities detected cannot be attributed to mere errors. They reveal a clear pattern of behaviour – a total disregard for the applicable financial rules and an apparent intent to channel funds to 'friendly' companies and organisations.

"For this reason, we invite the Secretary-General and the Legal Service of the European Parliament to examine, without delay, the legal actions against individual members of the dissolved political group ID where evidence shows that those members approved or knowingly benefited from the ineligible expenditure and were unjustly enriched by the retention or expenditure of EU funds.

"We also invite the Legal Service and DG FINS to bring a civil action for professional negligence against the external auditors who certified the ID Group’s accounts without detecting breaches of the existing rule for spending EU public money. These auditors should be excluded from the European Parliament's short list of auditors available to the political groups."