Le Pen faced charges last year along with his daughter Marine Le Pen over allegations they and other figures in their National Rally party embezzled money from the European parliament with fake jobs. Jean-Marie Le Pen was excused from attending court for health reasons.

Le Pen repeatedly courted controversy and legal action with his views on the Holocaust, which he described as a “mere detail” in the history of the second world war, and his lauding of France’s wartime government at Vichy that collaborated with the country’s Nazi occupiers.