Press
While he is overseeing a vote, the members of parliament traditionally shake hands with the youngest member of parliament in the inaugural session.
Paris – For several legislative periods, it has been customary for MPs to welcome the youngest member of parliament into their ranks with a handshake during the inaugural session of a new parliament in France. However, the first parliamentary meeting last week demonstrated how divided the camps in France’s National Assembly really are in 2024.
The “Benjamin” of the National Assembly elected on 30 June and 7 July was this time the 22-year-old Flavien Termet, who secured his place in the Ardennes constituency 08 as a candidate of the right-wing populist Rassemblement National in the second round of voting with 52 percent of the vote against the liberal opponent of the government coalition. As the newspaper The Figaro reported that Termet had already been involved with Sarkozy’s party Les Republicains as a teenager, but then turned to the Rassemblement National on the grounds that they were too “profit-hungry and globalist”.
Rock, paper, scissors: How members of the Left Party avoided a handshake
This prompted a large number of MPs, especially left-wing MPs, to refuse the young politician the traditional handshake. One, the 39-year-old left-wing politician François Piquemal, even made fun of Termet’s outstretched hand and, grinning, started a round of “rock, paper, scissors”, which was commented on maliciously by many on social media platforms such as X, but also critically by some.
Green politician Sandrine Rousseau sees her decision to refuse to shake hands with Termet as less fun, but with an important political message. The 52-year-old explained her actions in an interview with news channel TF1: “I am not shaking hands with the Rassemblement National. (…) Just shaking their hand would trivialize them. So no.”
Handshake in France’s National Assembly: How the tradition comes about
The background to the tradition is that this youngest member of parliament has to check the legality of the vote during the first round of voting for the new parliamentary presidency and is positioned directly at the ballot box for this purpose. Here, the older parliamentarians symbolically greet the newcomers to parliament with a handshake as they pass by, accepting them into their ranks regardless of age or status and paying them respect.
According to tradition, the gesture is also intended to show that new members of parliament are a symbol of political renewal and progress under a new parliamentary majority, and in this case it clearly shows how France’s parliament is facing a divided future. Most of the MPs who refused to shake hands with the 22-year-old belong to the left-wing alliance, which clearly won the election in the second round but still did not achieve a majority.
The fact that this could still become a stumbling block for France’s House of Representatives was shown by the result of the vote on the parliamentary presidency and the reactions to it. The Renaissance politician Yaël Braun-Pivet, the previous parliamentary president, was re-elected, which clearly demonstrated the narrow lack of a majority for the left, whose candidate received 13 votes less according to a report by the Tagesschau. (saka)
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