2023-07-21 14:29:48
In early July, despite a ban, several deputies from La France insoumise (LFI) and Europe Ecologie-Les Verts (EELV) marched in tribute to Adama Traoré, who died in 2016 after trying to flee a police check. They “maintained their presence at a demonstration with the slogan of ‘everyone hates the police'”, were indignant the presidents of the groups of the presidential camp, in a letter addressed to the president of the Assembly, the macronist Yaël Braun-Pivet. They asked that the office of the National Assembly be seized “with a view to a possible sanction”.
No sanction will be pronounced, Mrs. Braun-Pivet arguing what “Only acts that take place within the confines of the Assembly can give rise to a disciplinary sanction”. But this episode reflects the rise in tensions in the hemicycle since the start of Emmanuel Macron’s second five-year term.
The use of disciplinary sanctions against parliamentarians, extremely rare during the first decades of the Fifth Republic, has increased markedly. In total, more than 90 have been pronounced for a year and the beginning of the legislature, most during the debates on the pension reform.
A use that has become more frequent in recent years
Four disciplinary penalties are possible
The regulations of the National Assembly lays down penalties for disciplinary offenses committed by deputies. This involves, among other things, sanctioning MPs who cause “a stormy scene”doing “call for violence in public session” or even insulting a member of the government or a parliamentarian. They may be subject to:
a simple call to order; a call to order with entry in the minutes: they are deprived of a quarter of the parliamentary allowance for one month (the same puncture can be applied in the event of fraud in the ballot, sanction used once against two deputies); of censure: they lose half of the parliamentary allowance for one month; of censure with temporary exclusion: they lose half of their allowance for two months, and cannot “to take part in the work of the Assembly”is “to reappear in the Palace of the Assembly until the expiration of the fifteenth sitting day following that on which the sentence was pronounced”.
During the Fifth Republic, disciplinary power was, until recently, very little used and mainly focused on simple calls to order. This is by far the most applied disciplinary sanction (102 of the 132 pronounced since the beginning of the Fifth Republic). The presidential majority has used it extensively in recent months, particularly in the context of pension reform. In the recent period, other sanctions may have concerned, for example, situations of “confusion between the exercise of their political mandate and private interests”.
An increase in sanctions under Macron
In total, 109 of the 132 sanctions pronounced since 1958 have been since 2017 and the arrival of Emmanuel Macron in power. At the same time, the most severe penalties are less rare. At the beginning of 2023, censorship with temporary exclusion was thus pronounced by the Assembly, on the proposal of the office, for two deputies including Thomas Portes (LFI), for a tweet which shows him, girded with his tricolor scarf, setting foot on a ball with the effigy of the Minister of Labor. This sanction had until then only been pronounced once during the Fifth Republic, in 2011. Similarly, calls to order with entry in the minutes, the first use of which dates from 2009, are more frequent.
Verbal virulence is not an unprecedented phenomenon, including during the Fifth Republic, recalls historian Jean Garrigues. So, can we deduce from the increase in sanctions a recent increase in violence in the hemicycle? For the Chairman of the Parliamentary and Political History Committee, the tensions of the last few months must be seen as a form of ” Roleplay “ between La France insoumise and the presidential camp. If one tries to “show the public, through this conflict, that he is the only opposition”the majority tends to “exclude from what is known as the Republican arc”.
In a recent interview with MondeOlivier Rozenberg, researcher at the Center for European Studies and Comparative Politics at Sciences Po, argues that “the explosion of sanctions (…) results, in part, from the increase in verbal tensions which is due both to the record number of elected members from the extremes and the refusal of some to play the codified club game of the parliamentary institution”. Another explanation proposed: the use, by the majority, of “all the weapons of the procedure at their disposal to circumvent the opposition”, fueling discontent.
Sanctions that vary over time and majorities
The deputies of the radical left, the most sanctioned
It is unsurprisingly the elected representatives of La France insoumise, most of whom are serving their first term in the National Assembly, who concentrated almost all of the sanctions for the ordinary parliamentary session 2022-2023. On March 16, Matthias Tavel (LFI) for example received a call to order for a “Shut up, you up there! », thrown at a far-right MP. At the same time, the deputies of the National Rally have received only four sanctions since their massive arrival in Parliament last year.
Opposition parliamentarians are the most punished, but they do not have a monopoly. Macronist Pascale Fontenel-Personne was thus called to order in 2017 for his “confusion between the exercise of his parliamentary mandate and the interests of his company”.
A variable scope of sanction?
“It is complicated to sanction his camp”, notes Jean Garrigues. Several politicians have recently alleged differences in treatment depending on the political affiliation of the MP in question. End of July 2022François Ruffin thus deplored that a deputy of the majority received only a call to order for a Nazi salute (fact, according to the person concernedpour “to stigmatize” a member of the National Rally who would have previously made this gesture) – while Mr. Ruffin had for his part been financially sanctioned in 2017 for having worn a football jersey in session, in support of a bill.
He is “allowed to wonder about the cases where the disciplinary prosecution sanctions the word of an elected official. It could have happened recently”, noted in early 2020 Denis Baranger, professor of public law at the University of Paris-II Panthéon-Assas, in a contribution to a fact-finding mission on parliamentary immunity.
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“The notion of tension or the terms of insults change over time “, underlines the researcher Olivier Rozenberg. Moreover, “tolerance to certain excesses decreases”. For example, ” there is a much greater vigilance” concerning reflections of a racist, homophobic or sexist nature, abounds Jean Garrigues. Despite the violence of some right-wing parliamentarians around the decriminalization of abortion in 1974, no deputy had been sanctioned at the time.
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