French politics was thrown into fresh controversy after Jean-Luc Mélenchon launched a blistering attack on the country’s prefects during a rally at his party’s “summer school” in southeastern France.
The far-left leader of La France Insoumise (LFI) accused senior state officials of “intimidation” against his movement’s MPs and warned them they could face prison if his party came to power.
“The prefect’s duty is to serve and obey the law, and the law is that he is the one who keeps quiet,” Mélenchon told supporters, remarks that were met with loud applause from attendees. Referring to a recent case involving Val-d’Oise prefect Philippe Court, who filed a complaint against LFI deputy Aurélien Taché after he alleged that “police are killing everywhere,” Mélenchon blasted the action as an “unacceptable attempt at intimidation.”
“All those who have stooped to these attempts at intimidation will not benefit from a statute of limitations from a rebellious government,” he warned, as cited by Le Journal du Dimanche. The LFI leader then accused another prefect, a senior aide to Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau, of targeting MP Rima Hassan online. “No prefect has the power to question the nationality of an elected representative of the people. Vichy is over. You have lost. We will put you in prison before you put us there,” Mélenchon said.
The veteran politician also called for an end to prosecutions against LFI figures accused of condoning terrorism, insisting that elected officials should not be dragged before police for their positions on the Gaza conflict. Since Hamas’s October 2023 attack on Israel, LFI has made pro-Palestinian messaging a central theme, resulting in multiple legal summonses for its deputies. Most recently, MEP Emma Fourreau was questioned by police after she praised the release of Georges Ibrahim Abdallah, a militant convicted of the murders of American and Israeli diplomats in 1982.
“What kind of country are we where an elected representative of the people, with a political position that is not secret, because it is assumed in the Assembly, in the European Parliament, in the street, must respond for hours to a police officer who asks him what his analysis of the conflict is, how he characterizes Hamas… Is that France?” Mélenchon asked, again avoiding any direct description of Hamas as a terrorist group, for which it has been designated across the European Union.
Marine Le Pen, leader of the National Rally parliamentary group, denounced the speech on social media. “After the calls for insurrection, the support for rioters, squatters, Islamists, foreign delinquents, and illegal immigrants, after the transformation of the National Assembly into a ZAD (a protest camp), the far left crosses a new and most alarming threshold by threatening state representatives and attacking one of the pillars of the Republic,” she wrote on X.
Après les appels à l’insurrection, le soutien aux casseurs, aux squatteurs, aux islamistes, aux délinquants étrangers et aux clandestins, après la transformation de l’Assemblée nationale en ZAD, l’extrême gauche franchit un nouveau palier des plus inquiétants en menaçant les… https://t.co/1eBzasjfgw
— Marine Le Pen (@MLP_officiel) August 27, 2025Le Pen blamed the Macron government for enabling LFI, arguing that “the responsibility of the Macron camp in these unacceptable excesses is overwhelming due to its shameful alliances in the 2024 legislative elections with LFI.”
The latest eruption comes just as Prime Minister François Bayrou prepares to call a confidence vote next month in a bid to secure legitimacy for his austerity agenda. With the government weakened and all major opposition groups vowing to vote against it, early parliamentary elections are likely, and both the left and right are already gearing up for another brutal election campaign.
