It's a little music that circulates, behind the scenes. Surprising, difficult to corroborate with arithmetic certainty, but put forward as a fact proven by several and various interlocutors, whether they are ministers, government advisers, deputies or parliamentary collaborators: within the group La République en Marche au Assemblé and (LREM), deputies, like a cohort of ghosts, that no one can really identify, flee the most political meetings of the majority.
An executive, who knows the group as well, confirms: “There is a base of 80 deputies who do things, a hundred who follow and a hundred who are lost. »Almost a third that the majority leaders find it difficult to distinguish! “One hundred is excessive,” corrects a LREM MP. I would say more that we have between 10 and 15% of MPs that we no longer see. That is true. I can't even identify them because I don't know them. At one point, there are people who emerge, and others who do not. "
Their profile is often the same: they vote on texts, ensure attendance at committee, but desert the collective life of the majority. The first victim of this disaffection, the traditional meeting of the LREM group. According to our information, this weekly meeting was therefore moved to the Colbert room - less spacious than the large room in the basement of rue de l'Université, the annex of the Assembly - and it, for its part, prohibited access to employees. Too many deputies were used to being replaced by their parliamentary attachés…
"If it's to chat for two hours ..."
"The new rules of the Assembly, with a single question period in government on Tuesday, have also changed a lot, justifies a pillar of the party. Some MPs do not arrive until the early afternoon, without coming to group meetings in the morning, and then leave the following day in their constituencies. "
Elected from Morbihan, originally a farmer, Sandrine Lefeur assumes to do according to her "availability". "If we talk about agriculture, or important subjects like pensions, obviously I take the time to go there," she says. But if it is to chat for two hours, that does not interest me and I prefer to schedule other important things, telephone meetings. I'm not saying that I'm not interested in the life of the group, but it's just that we must prioritize. "
This is where the pack seems to hurt. "If you have no political impact, you stop going," slips an LREM MP about internal meetings in the group, while another sighs: "From the moment we say that you are never heard… ”To this game of influences there, only the most political, fed with the good grain of militancy in the PS or UMP apparatuses, cling. Like Aurore Berger, Olivia Grégoire, Sacha Houlié or Aurélien Taché, very active in the media, but also in parliamentary life.
"There is a big frustration to manage"
For novices, on the other hand, the adaptation is rougher. “Some have realized that being a member of parliament is hard. It takes a lot of time, you find yourself criticized for what you do, for what you are, that there is no power inherent in the office as a mayor can have it. Suddenly, the feeling may be: I have no power, so it pisses me off. There is a big frustration to manage, "testifies a Walker from the ranks of the PS.
Hence, for some, a strategic withdrawal to their constituency. "Many did not have parliamentary missions, especially when Richard Ferrand led the group, and gradually acted on a certain uselessness, because coming to Paris just to raise your hand is not very motivating. Others quickly preferred the local, sometimes with municipal targets in mind, ”analyzes a parliamentary collaborator.
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In the entourage of Gilles Le Gendre, the current boss of the group En Marche, we minimize this phenomenon. “We've been talking about these dropout MPs for months. But a hundred seems a lot to me, even fifty. I sometimes wonder if it is not a form of fantasy ", estimates a collaborator, who nevertheless admits" varying degrees of implication according to the missions of each other ", but who counts all the same 150 participants" on average »At group meetings… out of a total of 300.
