Conference by Marine Le Pen, October 19, 2020, in reaction to the Conflans-Sainte-Honorine attack.

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NICOLAS MESSYASZ / SIPA

  • In an interview with CNews, Wednesday, November 4, Marine Le Pen said that Turkey had received 44 billion euros in fifteen years, since 2005, from the European Union.

  • To achieve such a result, the president of the National Gathering has counted 30 billion euros loaned by the European Investment Bank (EIB) to Turkey since 1965.

  • According to the European Commission, the European Union has subsidized Turkey to the tune of 17.7 billion euros since 1996.

Invited on the set of CNews last Wednesday to talk about the tensions between France and the Muslim world following the death of Samuel Paty, Marine Le Pen, the president of the National Rally, attacked the European subsidies allocated to Turkey .

"I recall that [President Recep Tayyip Erdogan] has received from the European Union - that is to say partly from the pockets of our taxpayers - 44 billion euros in the last fifteen years", she said in front of journalist Laurence Ferrari.

📺 “Mr. Erdogan, who is threatening us today, has received from the European Union, and therefore partly from French taxpayers, 44 billion euros in recent years!

»#Turquie #LaMatinale @CNEWS pic.twitter.com/ZzNY2fKNQN

- Marine Le Pen (@MLP_officiel) November 4, 2020

FAKE OFF

Contacted by

20 Minutes

, Marine Le Pen's press attaché provided the figures on which the president of the RN relies to arrive at such an amount.

The table, from the Identity and Democracy group of the European Parliament, of which the RN is a member, mentions three separate envelopes.

“Migrant agreements”, for a total of 4.485 billion euros allocated since 2016. Aid for pre-accession to the European Union, which corresponds to 9.07 billion euros since 2007. And, finally, the loans granted by the European Investment Bank (EIB) to Turkey since 1965, ie 30.43 billion euros.

"Turkey, for the time being, will have benefited from payments of 43.985 billion euros from the European Union", concludes the document, which we have reproduced below:

Here is the table that the Identity and Democracy group in the European Parliament provided to 20 Minutes.

Be careful, a typo appears in the fourth column from the left: you have to replace 485 billion by millions.

- Identity and Democracy

Loan or grant?

First problem: the president of the RN clearly specifies on the CNews platform that Turkey has received 44 billion euros from the EU "in the last fifteen years".

So since 2005. Except that the EIB has lent 30.43 billion euros to Turkey since 1965, and around 26 billion euros since 2005. We would then reach around 40 billion euros, and not 44 billion euros. .

Second problem, and significant: a grant, by definition, is financial assistance.

By including in her calculation the 30.43 billion euros loaned by the EIB to Turkey since 1965 - money that the country must therefore repay - Marine Le Pen simplifies reality.

"These loans have nothing to do with subsidies", insists Anne-Sophie Alsif, chief economist at the Bureau of Economic Information and Forecasts, according to which this rhetoric from Marine Le Pen only serves to "inflate the figures" .

The European Commission has provided

20 Minutes

with details of the subsidies granted to Turkey by the European Union.

“The EU has allocated a global amount of 17.7 billion euros for financial cooperation with Turkey since 1996, notably through the Instrument for Pre-Accession Assistance (IPA), and its predecessors , namely the Phare program and Turkey's pre-accession and transition facility ”, states the Commission.

Of these 17.7 billion euros, 6 billion have been allocated to aid refugees in Turkey, of which 3 billion euros have come from contributions to the EU budget by member states.

The Commission specifies that these billions of euros support "the needs of the refugees, and not the reforms of President Erdogan in Turkey".

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