La France insoumise took summary proceedings to court on Friday for “dissemination of false information”, after the launch by Renaissance of a retirement simulator supposedly built on the program of the New Popular Front, but “untruthful”, according to LFI. During the legislative election debate organized Thursday evening on France 2, Prime Minister Gabriel Attal announced the launch of a simulator calculating retirement pensions if the New Popular Front implemented its program.
“All French people who watch us can connect to the site. You enter the amount of your pension and you see how much your CSG (general social contribution) will increase and how much less pension that will mean for you,” declared Gabriel Attal, who shared the site’s link on the social network X. LFI quickly counter-attacked. “We are taking action before the judicial judge on the basis of article L163-2 of the Electoral Code due to false and misleading allegations likely to alter the vote,” the movement told AFP.
“This simulator is false,” assured LFI
According to this article, “when inaccurate or misleading allegations or imputations of a fact likely to affect the sincerity of the upcoming vote are disseminated deliberately, artificially or automatically and massively through an online public communication service, the interim relief judge may (…) prescribe (…) all proportionate and necessary measures to stop this dissemination”.
The interim hearing will take place on Monday at 10:00 a.m. before the 17th chamber (specializing in press offenses), we learned from a judicial source. “This simulator is misleading,” assured LFI in a press release, explaining that it relied “on calculation methods that do not appear in the New Popular Front program and gives completely inconsistent results that could mislead” voters. “A few days before the election, this disinformation campaign is simply unacceptable,” added the movement.
This simulator “was created by Renaissance to spread fake news about our program”, also reacted the Socialist Party on X. “It’s a total intellectual scam”, added socialist senator Corinne Narassiguin. “They started with a socialist amendment to the pension reform which was not voted on, and which is not in the NFP program.” Requested by AFP, Renaissance indicated that the objective of this simulator was to “alert the French, particularly retirees, to the real impact that the amendments” tabled by the Nupes deputies “would have on their pensions” .
“Indeed, there are some results that are aberrant on this simulator, but it is the fruit of their own amendment and the reform that they proposed” to the Assembly during the debate on pensions, explained a manager to AFP. “Now, they are going to tell us that finally, they have changed their program, and that the amendments that were filed a year ago are no longer valid,” he joked. The same manager explained that this simulator follows a similar device “that the Popular Front published on its tax reform”. But the previous week, the Ecologists denounced this tax simulator, called “impots-frontpopulaire.fr”, affirming that it was “not an official site of the New Popular Front or any of its parties”.