Failure to respect parity of candidates will cost Eric Ciotti’s micro-party dearly

Among the candidates who followed Eric Ciotti in the last legislative elections, parity was far from being respected. As a result, the penalties will amount to two million euros in fines per year. This is far from being the only political party to be sanctioned during this election.

The political parties are taking advantage of the summer to do their sums after the legislative elections. Failure to respect parity of candidates will cost some dearly. The penalties prove their reason for being. In this case, the rebels who are the only ones to achieve perfect parity of candidates will not be sanctioned. They achieved parity by investing 116 women for 117 men. The communists and the ecologists are almost there as well. On the other hand, the LR candidates who followed Éric Ciotti were 11 women for 52 men. The penalty falls beyond a 2% difference. Éric Ciotti’s micro-party will therefore be fined two million euros per year. It should only have a few hundred thousand euros left in subsidies according to the calculations of the newspaper le World…

At the RN, it is barely better with a million euros in penalties, even if their allocation explodes thanks to their 126 deputies. The National Rally will receive 18 million per year. Same fine for the Socialist Party with a million euros. A fine also absorbed by an increase in allocations since the socialists have won elected officials. Ensemble will also have to take out the checkbook too. The former presidential majority records the biggest drop in female candidates with 43.5% of women invested instead of 48.5% in the 2022 legislative elections.

The lesson of all this is easy to establish. In list elections, such as the European or municipal elections, parity between men and women is mandatory. But for legislative elections – where candidates compete individually – the count is not there, 24 years after the introduction of fines. Although they may have doubled in 2014, it is not enough.

The aim of this measure was to ensure parity among elected officials! Of course, there has been progress. We went from 6% women in 93 to 38% two years ago, but now it is regressing again. Beyond these raw data, women still need to have winnable constituencies. In the end, for this legislative election, gender parity in the National Assembly at the level of elected officials is present only within the environmentalist group with 16 female deputies and 17 male deputies, the addition of the five rebel rebels does not change anything. On the LFI side, which had perfect parity of candidates, on the other hand, the gap is widening. Out of 72 rebels, there are only 29 women (40%, which is still above the average for the Assembly).

The same is true for Ensemble, with 41 women out of a hundred deputies. For Horizons, there are 12 out of a group of 31.

On the right, however, it’s a big plunge: 13 women out of 47 deputies in the LR, as for… And “On the right” (the Ciottist group): there are only four of them. It’s a little better at the RN, where there are a third of women: 40 out of a group of 126.

If the environmentalists are doing better than the others, they say it is because they are trying to give the candidates as many winnable constituencies. A question of culture in a party often led by a woman, or empowerment groups have been trying for several years to encourage new vocations. A leader of the Macronist party admits that the surprise dissolution did not help. With 48 hours to submit applications, women were more likely to refuse. “When there is political tension, Gisèle Halimi used to say, “It’s always the women who pay the price,” which seems more relevant than ever.