The injunction by European Parliament President David Sassoli at the January plenary session to remove the small flags that we had become accustomed to seeing on desks in the Eurosceptic ranks continues to cause controversy.
The bitter pill will clearly not go down easy with the Identity and Democracy (ID) group. Among its French members of the Rassemblement National, the decision is described as “arbitrary”, “brutal” and even “almost totalitarian”. And they have no intention of letting it happen.
On Tuesday 11 February, Jérôme Rivière, chair of the French ID group delegation to the European Parliament, spoke to David Sassoli on this subject. According to our information, the meeting did not result in a change in the position of the President of the institution.
In a statement issued at the end of the meeting, the French delegation stated that it would appeal against this decision to the Court of Justice of the European Union this week.
“We don’t know who, because there’s no written decision... The Bureau, we were told [...] has considered that the presence of these small flags was contrary to Article 10 of our rules of procedure which prohibits banners”, Mr Rivière told the press ahead of his meeting with Mr Sassoli.
According to him, the decision was motivated by “panic over Brexit”. “There is no question for us to give in to this injunction of the European Parliament which, in fact, after Brexit, decided to quash the Nations. And to quash Nations, what better symbol than to tear down their flags!” he said.
“The French flag is not a banner. [...] It’s a flag that symbolises the French Republic”, continued Mr Rivière.
French MPs have written to Hélène Carrère d’Encausse, Permanent Secretary of the Académie française, to ask her whether, in the French language, a flag can be assimilated to a banner. (Original version in French by Marion Fontana)