Should we create a France-Palestine friendship group in the National Assembly? This is the question which was submitted on Wednesday May 15 to the Palais-Bourbon office, as revealed by franceinfo on April 27. If there already exists a study group with an international vocation on Palestine, some deputies are pushing to transform it into a friendship group, for symbolic and political reasons. Others are opposed to it, in a tense national and international context since the October 7 attack in Israel. However, these friendship groups have a very supervised role.
1What are parliamentary friendship groups for?
Friendship groups were created in 1959 at the National Assembly to bring together elected officials interested in different countries. These groups are transpartisan and are composed on a voluntary basis, without limit of number, according to the interests or affinities of elected officials for this or that country. In the Senate, the same system exists, with 81 interparliamentary friendship groups responsible for “bilateral cooperation between Parliaments”. In the Assembly, there are 146 friendship groups.
The Palais-Bourbon regulations specify that their objective is to “building links between French and foreign parliamentarians” and to be “actors of France’s foreign policy and instruments of the international influence of the National Assembly”.
These friendship groups “play a important role in what we call parliamentary diplomacy”, explains historian Jean Garrigues. It is mainly about “form links with their parliamentary counterparts abroad, through fact-finding missions to these countries and receptions in France, which allow them to obtain information in complete independence”, explains the president of the Parliamentary and Political History Committee. These activities may result in the drafting of public information reports.
2 How do they work?
Concretely, these groups come together and organize auditions, receptions and conferences in France, as well as missions abroad. They can sometimes travel to places where there is no longer French diplomatic representation, such as in Yemen in 2018, reported Point. When the President or the Minister of Foreign Affairs travels abroad, it is also customary for him to take some members of the corresponding friendship group with him in his delegation.
The activities of these groups are, however, subject to budgetary realities. Their reception and mission expenses are subject to approval by the office of the Assembly. “I had a budget approved each year and I validated on average around ten missions abroad and around ten receptions, ensuring that these events were transpartisan”explains Laëtitia Saint-Paul, Renaissance MP for Maine-et-Loire and president of the delegation responsible for international activities from 2019 to 2022.
Another constraint is imposed, this time of time: “For parliamentarians, work in friendship groups comes after work in the hemicycle, in committee and in constituenciesadds Jean Garrigues. It is not the primary activity of the parliamentarian, it remains a marginal activity.”
3How can these groups be created?
To see the light of day, friendship groups must receive approval from the office of the Assembly or the Senate. Then they are almost automatically renewed after each renewal of the hemicycle. For a friendship group to be created in the Assembly, the country must meet three criteria, according to the regulations: that a Parliament exists there, that it maintains diplomatic relations with France and that the country belongs at the United Nations.
If these three criteria are not met, deputies can form a study group with an international vocation, abbreviated to Gevi in parliamentary jargon. This category was created in 1981 and there are currently eight Gevi, in North Korea, Belarus, Taiwan and Palestine.
But is there a real difference between a friendship group and a Gevi? In fact, the regulations of the Assembly specify that a Gevi has the “same means”namely an administrative secretary made available, and the possibility of using the Assembly budget to organize receptions and missions abroad. “We meet parliamentarians, we create links”explains Richard Ramos, MoDem deputy for Loiret and president of Gevi on Palestine since the start of the year. “We are meeting facilitators, we can put date producers in contact with the Rungis market”, he continues. For example, the group auditioned on March 14 Hala Abou Hassira, the Palestinian ambassador to France.
4What would the creation of a France-Palestine friendship group change in the Assembly?
For the historian Jean Garrigues, the difference between the two types of groups is however not “not negligible”because their institutional status is not the same: “The friendship group is part of the work of Parliament, just like the standing committees.” Furthermore, the creation of a friendship group can, according to him, “change the nature of relations with the country concerned, since it is a form of recognition of a State: the study group is interested in a people, while the friendship group is interested in a State” .
At the initiative of this request, Richard Ramos makes the same analysis: “A Gevi does not have the same recognition in Parliament as a friendship group. We cannot advocate for a two-state solution and have a France-Israel friendship group, but not the equivalent for Palestine “pleads the MP, aware however that the transformation of Gevi into a friendship group would not change anything in terms of operations or the budget. “But it would be historic and symbolic”he insists.
“It would be a decision symbolic, certainly, but the symbolic is important”agrees the non-registered deputy for Finistère Jean-Charles Larsonneur, former president of Gevi. “It is particularly timely to send a signal now, both to the Palestinians and to the French, to avoid the importation of the conflict.”
But for Mathieu Lefèvre, president of the France-Israel friendship group, this decision does not go without saying. “The debate is legitimate, but I am not in favor of it, because all the criteria are not met: Palestine is not an internationally recognized state, it is quite factual”points out the Renaissance deputy from Val-de-Marne, who believes that parliamentarians should not “not carry out a diplomacy competing with that carried out by the executive”. Her colleague Laëtitia Saint-Paul also believes that the office should stick to the “constant case law”, and not create a friendship group with a State not recognized by Paris.
Like Richard Ramos, 26 deputies who are members of Gevi on Palestine (which has 44) addressed on May 9 an open letter to Emmanuel Macron to ask him to recognize the Palestinian state. The president of the Gevi on Palestine fears that this friendship group project will pay the price in the international context. “I receive messages from centrists and macronists who tell me that this is not the time, this is real cowardice”regrets Richard Ramos. “If, tomorrow, we do not become a friendship group, [le bureau] of the Assembly risks adding fuel to the fire and strengthening the anger of certain French people against the government of Israel”, he warns. Whatever the outcome of the office vote, the MoDem deputy hopes to be able to organize a mission to Palestine before the end of spring or in the fall.