After having failed on June 9 to join the European Parliament, Jean Lassalle will try to reconquer on June 30 and July 7 a seat in a hemicycle that he knows well: that of the National Assembly. The double presidential candidate is officially a candidate for the legislative elections in the fourth constituency of Pyrénées-Atlantiques, of which he was the deputy from 2002 to 2022.
In this rural constituency straddling the Basque Country and Béarn, this champion of rurality will be notably opposed to the outgoing deputy Inaki Echaniz (PS/Popular Front), according to the list of candidates made official on Sunday by the prefecture.
A forty-year mandate at the head of Lourdios-Ichère
Mayor for forty years of the village of Lourdios-Ichère in the Pyrénées-Atlantiques, Jean Lassalle did not stand as a candidate in the 2022 legislative elections. He justified his decision by “medical imperatives”.
Head of the Rural Alliance list, alongside the president of the hunters’ federation Willy Schraen, in the last European elections, the Béarnais had collected 2.4% of the votes. Two years earlier, the former MP had gathered more than a million votes (3% of the vote), under the banner Let’s Resist! during the first round of the presidential election.
This former shepherd became famous by singing at the top of his lungs in 2003 in the hemicycle the Béarnais anthem “Aqueros mountagnos” or by starting a hunger strike in 2006 for thirty-nine days at the National Assembly in a fight widely publicized against the relocation of the Japanese Toyal factory to his canton.
