LFI deputy Ugo Bernalicis received an increased financial sanction on Wednesday in the National Assembly, for having caused a scandal at the end of November in the law committee. His amount: half of his parliamentary allowance for one month, or a little less than 3,000 euros. The office of the Assembly, its highest collegial body, decided on this sanction, a “simple censorship” which was approved by a vote in the hemicycle in the afternoon.
While waiting for the office meeting, the President of the Assembly Yaël Braun-Pivet had already pronounced on December 1 “the deprivation for one month of a quarter of her parliamentary allowance, or 1,476.84 euros”, for having “disturbed order and provoked the other deputies in an outrageous manner. The office doubled the financial sanction without going as far as a 15-day exclusion of the MP.
A rare cacophony
On November 30, standing and thundering, the deputy from the North called for an interruption of the debates to allow the elected representatives of the Law Committee, busy with the immigration bill, to go to the hemicycle. The reason ? An LFI text, registered under their reserved day, and which had previously passed before the Law Commission, was currently being examined.
The Renaissance president of the commission Sacha Houlié replied that a suspension would come later. ” What is this ? », “intolerable”, had stormed Ugo Bernalicis. The scene had plunged the commission into a rare cacophony, between noisy and invective questions from deputies, some on the left not hiding their embarrassment a posteriori.
“I protested, I spoke loudly, for a long time of course”, but it was “parliamentary self-defense”, because “we cannot be in two places at the same time” in the hemicycle and in committee, reacted Ugo Bernalicis on Wednesday. According to him, the deputies of the presidential majority “have the + feeling of their defeat” on the immigration law on Monday and want to “subdue” the opposition.
A series of other sanctions
A series of other sanctions were taken. The ecologist Sandra Regol will be deprived of a quarter of her parliamentary allowance for a month for comments in committee targeting the National Rally, which she notably accused of not taking into account “cases involving pedophiles”. RN deputy Thomas Ménage welcomed “a totally justified sanction”. “We cannot allow ourselves to be defamed with impunity by the far left,” he commented.
The LFI Sébastien Delogu also loses 25% of his monthly allowance for having shouted “racists” in the hemicycle, during an intervention by LR Michèle Tabarot in favor of the denunciation of the agreement between France and Algeria on immigration. Same sanction for the Insoumis Antoine Léaument who had called the RN elected officials “Nazis”, he indicated, comments which had aroused the indignation of Marine Le Pen’s group.
RN Jocelyn Dessigny is also deprived of a quarter of his compensation for one month for having accused Renaissance Rémy Rebeyrotte of being a “nazillon”, according to two parliamentary sources.
“A stop to a drift in behavior”
“The office wanted to put a stop to a drift in behavior”, according to a press release from the President of the National Assembly, who calls for “appeasement”. “The total of sanctions taken since the start of the legislature is now 145. As a reminder, 6 sanctions were imposed between 2012 and 2017 and 16 between 2017 and 2022,” she indicated.
Jean-Luc Mélenchon reacted strongly on …. Is the problem the deputies or her? », Launched the leader of LFI.
“You will be shorn at the Liberation for having voted with the RN”
The president of the environmentalist deputies Cyrielle Chatelain, for her part, requests a sanction against Jean-René Cazeneuve (Renaissance), whom she accuses of having told her in the hemicycle that she would be “shorn at the Liberation for having voted with the RN” against the immigration bill, a “threatening insult” that Jean-René Cazeneuve denies having uttered.
Tuesday, during the government questions session electrified by the rejection of the immigration bill the day before, “he told me, twice and with determination, the following words: + You will be shorn at the Liberation for having voted with the National Rally +,” said Cyrielle Chatelain in a letter of protest addressed to the President of the National Assembly, Yaël Braun-Pivet (Renaissance). “As a direct witness to this scene, I confirm it,” declared on X Olivier Faure, First Secretary of the PS who sits very close to Cyrielle Chatelain and Jean-René Cazeneuve.
The MP requests “a disciplinary sentence” against Jean-René Cazeneuve after this “threatening insult”. The latter was not directly reachable Wednesday morning, but according to the newspaper Le Figaro he “firmly denies” these comments, which do not appear in the minutes of the session. The request of the environmentalist deputy had hoped to be examined by the Office of the National Assembly during the next meeting of this executive body, after the winter break, we learned from a parliamentary source (the work of the National Assembly resume in mid-January).