A Brussels court has dismissed a case against former French Prime Minister Edith Cresson on embezzlement charges due to lack of evidence.
Judge Dominique De Wolf also threw out the case against six former aides, a day after the prosecutor asked the court to dismiss the case because she deemed it to be a political rather than criminal matter.
"Things have been put back in their proper context," said public prosecutor Ms Marianne Thomas.
The charges were related to business trip costs when Ms Cresson was a member of the European Commission between 1995 and 1999.
Judge De Wolf's decision came as Ms Cresson met her successors in the Commission over administrative proceedings against her under EU treaty obligations that could lead to a case in the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg.
Ms Cresson, who was in charge of education and research in the EU executive, is the first former Commissioner to face questioning over possible criminal offences. She was at the centre of allegations of nepotism and mismanagement that forced the entire Commission to resign in 1999 under threat of parliamentary censure.
A Socialist who was France's first woman prime minister in 1991-1992, she had always denied any wrongdoing.
Lack of evidence had earlier led the prosecutor to drop efforts to charge Ms Cresson with forgery and conflict of interest, leaving her to focus on alleged embezzlement for authorising €7,000 worth of business trips.