The ethics officer of the National Assembly pinned Grégoire de Fournas on Thursday for “ethical breach”, after the elected RN promoted his wine on his deputy Twitter account, we learned from a parliamentary source. “Many people have contacted me to order me wine,” wrote this professional winegrower on Wednesday, mentioning a link to a website and thanking for the “support”, a message since 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 site of the Assembly, according to the same parliamentary source.
Disciplinary penalty if the recommendation is not followed
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 medium claiming his status as a deputy 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.
At the beginning of November, Grégoire de Fournas was excluded for 15 days from the Palais Bourbon after his remarks – “that he return to Africa” - launched in the hemicycle during an intervention by Carlos Martens Bilongo (LFI), who had aroused a wave of indignation. The deputy of Gironde had then denied any racist character, assuring to speak of the humanitarian boat Ocean Viking then blocked at sea with 234 migrants, and not of Carlos Martens Bilongo, elected black of Val-d’Oise.
“Failures” noted elsewhere previously
Deputies’ “breaches” of the code of ethics are periodically observed. For example in 2017, Pascale Fontenel-Personne (LREM 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 posted a video on YouTube showing him in his office at the Assembly describing his weekly activity and inviting the viewer to buy his Fakir newspaper.