The French parliament was halted on Thursday after a far-right MP shouted ‘go back to Africa’ at a Black politician during a debate about migration.

Carlos Martens Bilongo, of the leftist France Unbowed party, was challenging the government over a maritime rescue boat carrying hundreds of passengers in the Mediterranean with no assigned port to bring them to.

He was interrupted by Gregoire de Fournas, of Marine Le Pen’s National Rally party (RN), who was heard shouting out ‘go back to Africa!’

The comment caused huge commotion and it was unclear who it was targeted at as the pronouns ‘he’ and ‘they’ are pronounced the same in French.

The centrist government and left-wing alliance called it an unacceptable racial slur.

Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne told reporters after the incident: ‘There is no room for racism in our democracy.

‘The Bureau of the National Assembly will convene (on Friday) and should decide on necessary sanction.’

Carlos Martens Bilongo speaks to the journalist at the exit of questions to the government at the National Assembly in Paris (Picture: Ait Adjedjou Karim/ABACA/Shutterstock)

Bilongo called the comment ‘shameful’, saying: ‘Today, I was sent back to my skin colour. I was born in France. I am a French deputy.’

He pointed out that even if the words were aimed at the migrants rather than him personally, they would still have been ‘unjustifiable’, adding: ‘Has racism become so commonplace that this sentence has become acceptable?’

‘This episode reminds us of what the far-right is in France: the contempt for institutions and the detestation of millions of our French compatriots.’

Stephane Sejourne, who leads President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist party, said de Fournas should resign, and the left-wing Nupes alliance said that he should be expelled.

‘The National Rally has shown its true face today,’ the Nupes left-wing alliance said in a statement.

‘This racist slur is characteristic of the far-right: stigmatise according to the colour of your skin, divide the French people.’

French far-right party Rassemblement National (RN) parliamentary group leader Marine Le Pen (Picture: AFP via Getty Images)

However, the far right insisted de Fournas was not aiming the words at Bilongo, but at the stranded migrants.

Le Pen tweeted that he ‘obviously spoke about the migrants transported in boats by the NGOs’, adding: ‘The controversy created by our political opponents … will not deceive the French.’

She has attempted to detoxify her party’s image and convince voters the party founded by her father Jean-Marie, who was convicted several times of incitement to racial hatred, has moved towards the conservative mainstream and is now fit to govern.

With 89 lawmakers, the RN is the second-biggest party in the parliament.

A close ally of Le Pen, Jordan Bardella, is expected to take over as party leader on Saturday – even if she still calls the shots.

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‘Today, I was sent back to my skin colour. I was born in France. I am a French deputy.’