Pretend European court supports a couple of fines (6)
I believe the answer is:
affect
'pretend' is the definition.
(synonyms)
'european court supports a couple of fines' is the wordplay.
'european' becomes 'E' (abbreviation e.g. EU).
'court' becomes 'ct' (abbreviation used in road names).
'supports' is a charade indicator (letters next to each other) (bottom letters provide a support for the top ones).
'couple of' says to double the letters.
'fines' becomes 'f' (this could be a standard abbreviation which I don't know about).
'f' doubled is 'ff'.
'e'+'ct'='ect'
'a'+'ff'='aff'
'ect' after 'aff' is 'AFFECT'.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for affect that I've seen before include "Have repercussions on" , "Influence; make pretence of" , "Make a difference to" , "Put on" , "attack" .)