A member of the European Parliament has been kicked out of the far-left France Insoumise group following allegations that she harassed at least 13 different parliamentary assistants since 2019, including behaving aggressively towards the employees.
MEP Anne-Sophie Pelletier was booted from France Insoumise (LFI) after the party announced her departure in a press release on Monday, December 4th. They stated that 13 parliamentary assistants had claimed “degraded working conditions and harassing, inappropriate, and aggressive behaviour towards them on the part of Anne-Sophie Pelletier,” Le Parisien reports.
The LFI group added that the behaviour of Pelletier was incompatible with the party’s values and that it would be taking measures to make sure the parliamentary assistants who made the accusations would be able to keep their positions.
The expulsion, according to Le Parisien, is the second disciplinary measure invoked against an elected party member recently. It comes after MP Raquel Garrido was punished for allegedly spreading false rumours about the party after months of conflict and criticism of leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon.
Garrido fired back, claiming that the measures had more to do with her criticism of the party’s leadership over the past year than anything else.
LFI suspended Garrido from being “a speaker on behalf of the group in parliamentary proceedings for a period of four months,” which caused internal criticism among some of the party members who noted that it was the same punishment received by Adrien Quatennens, who had been convicted of domestic abuse in December of 2022.
Mélenchon’s party has seen a wave of scandals and bad press in recent months, particularly following the massacre of over a thousand Israeli civilians by Hamas on October 7th.
Mélenchon, who has run for the French presidency three times, was sharply criticised by his left-wing allies in other parties for his party’s reaction to the massacres, which some termed an “armed offensive by Palestinian forces,” done in “a context of intensification of the Israeli occupation policy.”
Socialist Party Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo slammed Mélenchon and the LFI, calling for the Socialists to end their cooperation with the far-left party and leave the New Popular Ecological and Social Union (NUPES) coalition.
LFI MP Danièle Obono went even further than her leader, speaking of Hamas as a “resistance movement,” telling French media, “Yes, Hamas is a resistance movement. It is an Islamist political group which has an armed wing and which resists Israel.”
She tried to clarify her remarks later on social media, saying, “I said that Hamas is an Islamist political group that claims to be part of the resistance to the occupation of Palestine. That’s a fact. Neither an apology, nor an endorsement, nor an endorsement for their despicable war crimes against Israeli civilians.”
French Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin, however, was not impressed with Obono’s comments and stated that he would refer the LFI MP to the public prosecutor over allegations of apology for terrorism.
“Hamas, ‘a resistance movement’? No! It is a terrorist movement. I am contacting the public prosecutor for advocating terrorism,” he said.
