Bruno Le Maire raised his voice this Tuesday afternoon in the Assembly during a verbal contest which pitted him against a deputy from the National Rally, during the traditional session of questions to the government.
In his question, the RN deputy for Moselle Alexandre Loubet criticized the executive for “selling off to foreign interests” French “industrial flagships”, expressing alarm at the possible takeover by an American group of the electronics company. Excelia. “When will you stop betraying the interests of France? “, he first launched to Bruno Le Maire. “You once worked for Dominique de Villepin, who denounced the cowardice of those who refuse to defend the interests of France, today the coward is you”, he returned to the charge a bit later.
“I have the honor to request a solemn apology from the National Rally for having used the term cowardly to a person who has always shown courage in his political commitment for twenty years that he has been in politics in the service of France and the French, ”retorted Bruno Le Maire, raising his voice.
“Excuses, excuses”, he then added off the microphone, to the applause of the majority deputies. Their RN counterparts then left the hemicycle for a time.
In front of the press, their leader Marine Le Pen criticized Bruno Le Maire for his “threatening posture”. “We do not have to be pointed at in the hemicycle by a minister. He will have to re-read the Constitution a bit, re-read the institutions. This situation is completely unacceptable”.
Two calls to order imposed on the RN
Upon their return to the session, the President of the Assembly Yaël Braun-Pivet deplored the “insult” uttered by Alexandre Loubet and inflicted on him a call to order with entry in the minutes, which deprives the deputy RN a quarter of his parliamentary allowance for one month. This sanction “does not exempt you from apologizing to the minister”, she added. The holder of the perch underlined having already indicated in the conference of the presidents of the Assembly the importance of having “respectful behavior” in the hemicycle.
“This decision is scandalous”, reacted Marine Le Pen during an interruption of the session. “Yes, the Minister of Economy is a coward when it comes to opposing foreign investment and the capture of our high-tech industries,” she confirmed.
His intervention was obviously not enough to calm the heated spirits in the hemicycle. The President of the Assembly later sanctioned a second RN deputy, Frédéric Boccaletti, with a call to order for having called the Minister of Education Pap Ndiaye a “communitarian”. A decision criticized by the president of the RN group in the Assembly who indicated that she had never, during her career as a magistrate “seen a single magistrate who would have condemned a political leader because he would have said to another that he was a coward, and even less a communitarian”.
During the last session of questions to the government, it was the deputy Nupes Danièle Obono who received a call to order for having “insulted the Assembly”, following an intervention by the deputy of the Aurore Berger majority on the Adrien Quatennens case.