France’s Assemblée Nationale has banned a far-right MP from parliament for two weeks for a racist outburst after he shouted “Go back to Africa” when a black member of the lower house was speaking about migrants.
Grégoire de Fournas, a member of the far-right Rassemblement National (RN), or National Rally, will also lose half his salary for two months. He said he was not referring to the MP, but to migrants.
The house erupted with outrage after his interjection on Thursday evening. The speaker, Yaël Braun-Pivet, halted proceedings immediately and demanded to know who had made the comment, which came as Carlos Martens Bilongo, of the radical-left La France Insoumise (LFI), was questioning the government.
Bilongo, a teacher, was addressing a request by SOS Mediterranée, a humanitarian organisation, for help in finding a port willing to accept 234 migrants rescued at sea in recent days. He said he was “deeply hurt and disappointed” by De Fournas’s remark but was heartened by the many messages of support he had received.
Immediately following the outburst, the parliamentary speaker said an investigation would focus on whether De Fournas said “he” or “they”, to establish whether the comment was directed at Bilongo or the migrants, before deciding on what punishment was appropriate. In French, “Qu’il retourne en Afrique” (he) and “Qu’ils retournent en Afrique” (they) are hard to distinguish when spoken.
On Friday, it was announced that De Fournas would be banned from attending parliamentary sessions for 15 days and lose half of his MP’s salary for two months – the most severe sanction available to the house.
Braun-Pivet ordered the MP to leave the lower house on Friday. “We must not weaken our democracy,” she said.
De Fournas apologised to Bilongo for “any misunderstanding”, saying he was referring to migrants arriving in France from Africa. He rejected calls to resign.
On Friday, parliamentary transcribers said their notes showed that the phrase De Fournas used was “He should go back to Africa”.
De Fournas’s outburst sparked immediate condemnation, with the prime minister, Elisabeth Borne, saying: “Racism has no place in our democracy.”
Marine Le Pen, the RN president, described the row as “crude”. “Grégoire de Fournas was clearly talking about migrants being transported by NGOs as evoked by our colleague in his question to the government. The row created by our political rivals is crude and doesn’t fool the French,” she tweeted.
However, Gérald Darmanin, the interior minister, called on De Fournas to resign. “I am extremely shocked by what happened in the Assemblée Nationale. I’ve been in the house for 15 years in one way or another and it’s the first time I’ve heard anything so disgraceful,” Darmanin told the news channel BFMTV.
• This article was amended on 7 November 2022 to correct the description of La France Insoumise’s political viewpoint from far left to radical left.
