Elise Lucet angry the president of the Assembly, who wrote to her an incendiary letter

The journalist from France Télévisions Elise Lucet offered drug tests to voluntary deputies at the Palais Bourbon. An initiative that sparked a shield raising among some elected officials.

Take the word. This is what Elise Lucet, journalist from France 2, piloted the program Special Envoywith the declaration of Eric Piolle, mayor of Grenoble. On February 3, the elected official proposed in the columns of Dauphiné liberated To do “salivary tests in the National Assembly and the Senate to see if the problem (of drugs, editor’s note) also affects decisions”.

Elise Lucet did it. She and her teams went to the lower room of the Parliament, in the four columns room more precisely to offer voluntary deputies to perform an anti-drug saliva test.“Just moisten this tab with saliva, and ten minutes later we know if you have taken cannabis, cocaine, heroin, amphetamines or ecstasys,” she explains face camera.

Many elected officials have agreed to lend themselves to the “game”, such as the boss of the Socialist Party (PS) Olivier Faure, or the elected representative of the Val d’Oise from the same political family, Ayda Hadizadeh. In reality, there are many deputies who have agreed to escape from it without complaining, even if some have preferred to pass their turn. And this Thursday, February 13, a new issue ofSpecial Envoy is broadcast, in which viewers will be able to find this sequence, mounted, in which one could see the recalcitrant deputies at the idea of ​​being controlled by the journalist.

“The National Assembly is not a theater”

The least we can say is that this initiative by Elise Lucet did not like everyone, far from it. Wednesday, February 12, the president of the National Assembly Yaël Braun-Pivet split a letter in which she challenges the journalist of France Télévisions about her visit to the Palais Bourbon. “The National Assembly is not a theater where we organize staging. I wanted to firmly remind Elise Lucet the rules that apply to journalists accredited to the National Assembly,” she writes .

She continues: “The fact of filming parliamentarians by offering them a salivary test seems particularly questionable to me, the legitimate refusal to submit to it being able to create a suspicion towards them (…) I deplore that you have knowingly overlooked the rules What must be respected by journalists accredited in these spaces which cannot lend themselves to such practices, “she continues in her missive.

The head of the Palais Bourbon is far from being the only one to be mounted in the niche against the initiative of Elise Lucet. The former Minister of Ecological Transition François de Rugy wonders if the journalist from France Television “asked for accreditation to film in the Assembly, did she mention these tests? What would we say if Cyril Hanouna or CNews were doing the same “report”? “He wonders about X. “‘Poubelle la vie’, the new program by Élise Lucet”, for his part sent the elected macronist of the Côtes-d’Armor, Eric Bothorel.

The vice-president of the National Assembly, Naïma Moutchou said for her part that the Bourbon Palace was “not (from) reality TV or the show. There are rules and respect in this house”, at the microphone of LCP. “The media blow of Elise Lucet (…) is a humiliation for our institution,” she regrets. “What is Lucet to be seen to be seen. For whom does she take a judge? A doctor? A cop? A parish priest?”, Published on X the deputy for the National Rally (RN), Sébastien Chenu.