This Friday, the group La France insoumise in the National Assembly tabled a constitutional bill to allow deputies who become parents to be replaced by their substitutes, the time of “welcoming a child”.
With since 2017 the rejuvenation and feminization of the Assembly (37% of deputies), more and more elected officials are pregnant, and more deputies becoming fathers wish to spend time with their newborn.
No recognition of parental leave
However, there is no recognition for them of maternity or paternity leave, the mandate not being a job. It is however possible for those concerned to request a delegation of their right to vote to another deputy.
At the origin of the bill, the rebellious Mathilde Hignet, who is due to give birth in a month, regrets being “constrained, like many others before [elle]to leave [son] empty seat in the Assembly”. “The goal of parity in politics cannot be achieved until parenthood is taken into account in the organization of our institutions,” she said in a press release.
His text, co-signed by his group and a few other mainly left-wing elected representatives, plans to add to article 25 of the Constitution the case of the possible replacement of a deputy by his or her deputy “in the event of the reception of a child “.
The President of the Assembly not in favor
In everyday life Release of Thursday, the president of the Assembly Yaël Braun-Pivet (Renaissance) explained that “it was not necessarily this path that we had to take”. Because “a substitute can hold a job, manage a business, be a liberal profession… It can be very complicated for him to come and sit for a few weeks in the Assembly to replace a parliamentarian”, and “he does not necessarily have the same skills than this parliamentarian, in particular to sit in committee”, she argues.
But “we are ready to adjust our rules as much as possible” to facilitate pregnancy and a maternity break, and “to facilitate the exercise of mandates and the ability to become a mother or father on a daily basis”, assures the holder of the perch.
The boss of the majority Renaissance group, Aurore Bergé, is due to give birth herself at the end of October, and intends to take the equivalent of maternity leave but “not to the end”. “Women must have a choice, that no one is forced not to exercise her right to maternity leave”. And “if a woman does not want to exercise it fully”, she has “the freedom”, she told CNews on Friday.