(Paris) Four out of ten French people judge the National Assembly, the lower house of the French Parliament, not or little “useful”, according to a study unveiled Tuesday, seven months before the next legislative elections in the country.
According to this study carried out among 4512 French people by the CSA polling institute, 29% of respondents believe that the parliamentary institution plays a role “not very useful” and 11% “not at all useful”.
In 1985, the year of the previous large-scale study requested by the National Assembly on the subject, only 13% of respondents considered it little or not useful.
Some 13% of those polled also approve of “violent behavior towards deputies or their collaborators, in their office or at home”, which increased during the social crisis of “yellow vests” at the end of 2018 and then the demonstrations against the introduction of a health passport in the summer.
The same percentage approves “insults towards deputies on social networks”.
“It is a feeling of unease that has gradually invaded our public life”, admitted Tuesday by presenting the investigation the President of the Assembly Richard Ferrand (of the party La République en Marche, of President Emmanuel Macron), whose own house suffered an attempted fire in February 2019.
The results of the study are “at first sight worrying” but they also give “avenues for action”, he added to some deputies and the press.
Police and army are popular
Thus, “the French are much more measured (in their judgment) when it comes to their deputy”, he notes, stressing that half of the population declares themselves “satisfied with the work of deputies”.
According to the study, the French rely more on institutions embodying order: 83% trust the gendarmerie, 82% the army and 77% the police against only 44% trusting the National Assembly and 45% in the Senate, the upper house of Parliament.
Elected in May 2017, French President Emmanuel Macron had promised a renewal of practices and his election coincided with the arrival of many novices to the National Assembly, but his commitments have struggled to be implemented, like ” an institutional reform aborted in the summer of 2018.
The first round of the next legislative elections in France will take place on June 12, almost two months after the presidential election.