He received the heaviest sanction provided for in the regulations of the National Assembly. The deputy RN of Gironde Grégoire de Fournas was sanctioned by “censorship with temporary exclusion”, at the end of a meeting of the office of the Assembly, its highest collegial body, which met for nearly two hours this Friday, November 4. Only the elected officials of the RN did not take part in the vote, having left the meeting before the scutin. The Bureau’s proposal was then approved by a standing vote of the Assembly.
Grégoire de Fournas risked “simple censorship”, that is to say the withdrawal of half of his parliamentary allowance for a month, or “censorship with temporary exclusion”, in other words the ban on appearing at the Palais Bourbon for fifteen sitting days and the deprivation of half of his parliamentary allowance for two months. He becomes the second deputy sanctioned with a temporary exclusion after the elected PCF parent Maxime Gremetz in March 2011, for an altercation due to badly parked ministerial cars, according to him.
The day before, Grégoire de Fournas had admitted having launched “that he return to Africa” during an intervention by LFI deputy for Val-d’Oise Carlos Martens Bilongo, who spoke about the “drama of illegal immigration” in a question to the government. The RN assured that its deputy was talking about the humanitarian “boat” Ocean Viking, mentioned earlier by Carlos Martens Bilongo, and in “no case” of the deputy himself. On BFMTV, this Friday, Grégoire de Fournas, who “assumes his remarks on anarchic migration policy”, accused Carlos Martens Bilongo of having “felt a blow to play in community victimization”.
The LFI deputy referred to him demanded “the heaviest sanction” against a “racist sentence” from an elected member of a far-right party who “has never changed”. Nupes and the presidential camp pleaded for the “heaviest” sanction. “The question of his resignation arises”, launched the Minister of the Interior Gérald Darmanin this Friday morning on BFMTV and RMC, adding that he would sign a petition from the Renaissance group demanding his departure. LFI and the Greens also demanded the resignation.
At the initiative of LFI, a rally in support of the Insoumis deputy concerned was held at midday near the Assembly, bringing together a few hundred people. “My person was attacked but also people who look like me. Millions of French people were attacked yesterday. In 2022, we must not give way to these ideas”, affirmed Carlos Martens Bilongo, surrounded by elected left and by Jean-Luc Melenchon.
Carlos Martens Bilongo had received the support of all the other benches. The words of Grégoire de Fournas deeply shook the Assembly on Thursday, with deputies gathered en masse at the foot of the perch to demand sanctions, an unprecedented scene. The President of the National Assembly Yaël Braun-Pivet prematurely ended the session of questions to the government, an extremely rare decision, because of the “seriousness of the facts” and “legitimate emotion”.
The exit of Grégoire de Fournas, winemaker in the Médoc, weakens the notabilisation strategy claimed by the troops of Marine Le Pen, since the unprecedented election of 89 RN deputies last June. The far-right group had already created controversy when the dean of the Assembly José Gonzales had immediately praised the French Algeria of his childhood on June 28, or during a stormy session where two RN deputies had treated the Minister of the Economy Bruno Le Maire as a “coward” and that of Education Pap Ndiaye as a “communitarian”, with calls to order in the key.
