A minute of silence that went to cacophony. The deputies paid tribute on Tuesday in the hemicycle to Aboubakar Cissé, a young murdered on Friday in a mosque in the garden. But, nevertheless, this moment of meditation had been dismissed at the beginning by the president of the Yaël Braun-Pivet Assembly.
Long set without a specific rule, these minutes of silence are now supervised by the presidents conference. This agency, which especially brings together all the group presidents and presidents of the committee, sought to end the fact that the owner of the institution had described “excess in this area.”
You need an agreement between all groups
Until now, there was no explicit procedure in the regulation of the National Assembly. Article 48 simply specifies that it establishes “its agenda on the proposal of the Presidents Conference.”
In fact, the use, which in no way is an obligation, wants to organize a tribute to the Assembly, a political group explicitly makes its application.
But another condition is considered necessary for parliamentary habits and customs so that a minute of silence takes place: the agreement of all groups at the Presidents Conference that brings together all the political trends of the National Assembly. In case of disagreement, the minute of silence is not granted … in principle at least.
Several precedents
It has happened several times in recent years. Leave, for example, the LFI group request to organize a Tribute to the 102 UN employees who died in Gaza From the beginning of the conflict between Israel and Hamas in November 2023 or for the two French Dead in bombing in Lebanon In October 2024, again asked by the president of the rebel deputies Mathilde Panot.
If the figures do not establish a strong inflation of the minutes of silence in recent years, there are 4 in 2024, 6 in 2023 or 3 in 2022, their rejections were regularly criticized by LFI or the RN that expected a minute of silence for the young Elias, assaulted by his phone and killed in Paris in January.
Minutes of “automatic” silence
The rules are now, at least on paper, very clear. The minute of silence is “destined to be systematic for the military, the gendarmes or the police officers killed in service,” said the document that supervises the minutes of silence and in which the Conference of Presidents agreed.
Another case in which the minute of silence is “systematic:” the death of important personalities of the French political world, acts of terrorism in France and for those of magnitude committed abroad. “
For example, there was a minute of silence for the former president of the National Assembly Jean-Louis Debré, who died last February.
Taxes in case of “strong emotion”
But for the other cases, the rules are more vague: “For other events, the option to pay a tribute must correspond to an important moment for the nation, whether a drama that arouses a strong emotion or a particularly happy or symbolic event.”
“The Presidents Conference agreed not to organize more a minute of silence related to a particular case,” can still be read in the document that summarizes the rules.
It remains to be defined what the deputies consider falling into the initiator of this definition. In the case of the minute of silence for Abubakar Cissé, the RN explained to fear “the instrumentalization on the left of a decision that respects the rules established by the Assembly”, during the meeting of the Presidents Conference with BFMTV.
On paper, the tribute should not have taken place, due to lack of consensus among all groups on the subject. But that did not prevent Yaël Braun-Pivet finally deciding to organize it, under the pressure of the socialists who publicly let it know that he did not understand this election.
“I think I didn’t want a controversy on the subject when the left was as a very unhappy whole. But the procedure is a small pilot once the office said no,” says a macronist deputy.
Variable geometry refusals
Another example that shows that the president of the National Assembly has a large room to maneuver on the subject: the minute of organized silence for a fiscal agent killed during a check in a second -hand merchant in November 2022.
Yaël Braun-Pivet had accessed a spontaneous application of the deputy of the environmentalist Sandrine Rousseau in the middle of a hemicycle to make a minute of silence in his memory, so asking for the approval of the Presidents Conference.
A few months later, Yaël Braun-Pivet rejected the application of Aymeric Caron, an insecure apparent attachment, made under the same conditions, but this time in memory of the migrants who died during a sinking of the Greek coast.
“This idea is great, but the presidents conference is there for that, so that we can collectively decide the moments when, in this hemicycle, we honor the missing persons,” he replied.
“She goes there if she believes she is of interest”
The head of the hanger had also decided on itself a minute of silence for the victims of Annecy’s attack in June 2023.
“All this is very political. We can see that when it is consensual, we run out of problem. When the minute of silence reflects a more political vision of society, Y already Braun-Pivet walks on eggs and, therefore, it goes if it considers that it is your interest,” says a ministerial advisor, good connoissee of Parliament.
However, the issue is nothing new. In 2014, Cécile Duffrot, then an environmental deputy, asked for a minute of silence for Rémi Fraisse, an activist killed by a grenade fired from a gendarme on the site of the Sivens dam.
At that time, the Greens were part of the socialist government and had accused Bernard Cazeneuve, then Minister of the Interior, of having evolved the situation. The president of the National Assembly, Claude Bartolone, had refused in the process of paying tribute to Rémi Fraisse on the walls of the Palais-Bourbon.
Source: BFM TV
