2023-12-14 23:55:29
The question remains unanswered. The Constitutional Council did not rule on Thursday on the question of whether the government still had the right to use the 49.3 weapon by the end of June, outside the budget, by rejecting an appeal from the Rally national. The Wise Men validated on Thursday the 2023-2027 financial programming law, of which RN deputies requested censorship.
The far-right group first contested the fact that the announcement of the use of 49.3 was entrusted on November 13 to the Minister of Relations with Parliament Franck Riester, who had read a letter from the Prime Minister, during a travel of Élisabeth Borne to Ireland. The RN considered that this approach should have taken place through a “decree granting the interim position” for the benefit of the minister. The Council brushed aside this remark, considering that nothing prevented this task from being entrusted to a member of the government.
The National Rally also protested against the successive implementation of the procedure of 49.3 on this text on two occasions: in extraordinary session at the end of September, then in ordinary session in mid-November, in order to have this law adopted without a vote. Marine Le Pen’s group hoped to know the case law regarding the use of 49.3.
A single cartridge
The Council simply said that the use of this constitutional tool was lawful in mid-November, without saying whether the executive had used the only cartridge available to it in matters of 49.3, excluding budgets. The government can in fact only draw this constitutional weapon for one piece of legislation per parliamentary session, apart from its unlimited use for the State and Social Security budgets.
Supported by legal opinions, the presidential camp believes that the 49.3 triggered in November on the programming law does not deprive it of another 49.3 during the current session. Because its use in November would then be considered to be a continuation of the first 49.3 triggered at the end of September in an extraordinary session on the same text.
But opposition groups have warned that they would contest this argument if the government used 49.3 again, for example on the immigration bill, although Emmanuel Macron rules out this hypothesis. The Constitutional Council does not comment and is therefore awaiting the possible use of 49.3 on another text to decide.
The public finance programming law for the period 2023-2027 was definitively adopted in mid-November. This text expects a public deficit to be reduced to 2.7% of GDP in 2027, below the European objective of 3%.
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