A member of the National Rally (extreme right) at the origin of a controversy in France, following remarks made Thursday evening in the National Assembly and deemed racist, was excluded for fifteen days, the maximum sanction.
This sanction was proposed unanimously by the members of the office of the National Assembly, meeting Friday at the beginning of the afternoon, then approved directly by a seated-standing vote of the Hemicycle.
Deputy Grégoire de Fournas, author of these remarks, was absent during the vote, while his parliamentary group spoke out against the sanction.
“Free democratic debate cannot allow everything, certainly not invective, insult, racism, whatever the target”, launched the President of the National Assembly, Yaël Braun-Pivet, calling for ” the dignity of the debates, to the refusal of all hatred, of all violence, even verbal”.
Thursday, during an intervention by the deputy of La France insoumise (LFI, radical left) Carlos Martens Bilongo, of Congolese origin, on the “drama of illegal immigration”, de Fournas launched in the hemicycle: “that ‘they go back to Africa’ or ‘let him go back to Africa’.
After a few minutes of confusion, the President of the National Assembly ended the session “given the seriousness of the facts”, according to her.
The RN deputy denied any racist character, claiming to have spoken of the “boat” and in no case of the deputy, elected from Val-d’Oise.