The ethics officer of the National Assembly pinned Grégoire de Fournas on Thursday November 17 for “ethical breach”after the elected member of the National Rally (RN) promoted his wine on his deputy Twitter account, we learned from a parliamentary source.
“Many people have contacted me to order wine”had written this winegrower by profession on Wednesday, mentioning a link to a website and thanking for the ” support ” received. The tweet has since been deleted.
The president of the Assembly, Yaël Braun-Pivet, had seized on Wednesday evening the ethics officer of the institution, an independent authority. The latter judged that the deputy “promoted a private interest (the company of his parents of which he was an employee) as part of his function”the Twitter account used being the account he referenced on the Assembly website, according to the same parliamentary source.
The ethics officer, Christophe Pallez, wrote to Grégoire de Fournas to inform him of this breach and recommend that he “no longer use this account or any other support claiming to be a member of parliament for such activities”. If the recommendation was not followed, the office of the Assembly, its highest collegiate body, could be seized and impose a disciplinary penalty.
Exclusion after racist remarks
At the beginning of November, Mr. de Fournas was excluded from the Palais-Bourbon for a fortnight after his racist remarks – “let him return to Africa” – launched in the hemicycle during an intervention by Carlos Martens Bilongo (La France insoumise, LFI) and which had aroused a wave of indignation.
The deputy for Gironde then denied any racist character, ensuring that he was talking about the humanitarian boat Ocean-Viking then stranded at sea with 234 migrants on board, and no Carlos Martens Bilongo, elected black from Val-d’Oise.
Of the shortcomings members to the code of ethics are periodically observed. In 2017, Pascale Fontenel-Person (La République en Marche, now Renaissance), whose transport company offered a paid service including a visit to the Palais-Bourbon, had been sanctioned. François Ruffin (LFI) had been called to order in November 2017 for having broadcast a video on YouTube showing him in his office at the Assembly describing his weekly activity and inviting the viewer to buy his newspaper, Fakir.