Analyse. As of this summer, the threat was explicitly formulated in the majority: “The oppositions never vote on the budget. » A doctrine faithfully followed by the latter and from which the current political chaos has resulted: by releasing the government from the obligation to negotiate, it has enabled it to transfer to them the responsibility for recourse to Article 49.3 of the Constitution which allows adopt a text without a vote. Not for a moment did the oppositions think of questioning this principle, so deeply rooted is it in contemporary parliamentary practice. However, there is nothing historically inevitable in France.
In the recent past, it even happened that a government agreed with the opposition to have its budget adopted. The example has often been cited since June: when, at the end of 1988, the socialist government of Michel Rocard found itself deprived of an absolute majority to have its budget for 1989 adopted, it appointed Guy Carcassonne, then adviser on relations with the Parliament at Matignon, to find a majority. Article by article, this one negotiates, sometimes with the centrists, sometimes with the communists, sometimes with the elected officials of overseas, granting to the ones and the others “sections of road, colleges, multi-purpose halls”told the socialist Henri Emmanuelli (1945-2017) when he was president of the general council of the Landes.
This “stereo majority”as Guy Carcassonne had nicknamed it, did not work for the following budgets, which passed thanks to 49.3. “The experience was never repeated”confirms Olivier Rozenberg, professor at the Center for European Studies and Comparative Politics at Sciences Po. Given the opposition, the budget is too important a political issue to justify any compromise. “The budget is the mother of laws, there is a very symbolic dimension, because it is supposed to express the philosophy of a policyexplains the historian Jean Garrigues. The oppositions use this as an excuse not to vote for it. But there is sometimes a very artificial character in this opposition. » This is intended above all to be a signal addressed to public opinion by Members who “imagine that they are permanently under the eye of the voters”, ironically Olivier Rozenberg. Adding: “Which is quite far from reality. »
Quasi-existential marker
Historically, the budget justifies the very existence of Parliament, in France and elsewhere in Europe. “The primary function of Parliament is to authorize the king to levy taxesrecalls Ramu de Bellescize, professor of public law in Rouen. Because the tax serves only one thing: to finance the war. » This presupposes close control of the executive power. But this use of finance laws as an almost existential marker for the opposition is relatively recent in French parliamentary history. “It is valid with the practice of Ve Republic and the majority fact, but does not correspond at all to the parliamentary tradition of the IIIe and from the IVe Republic “explains historian Nicolas Roussellier, a specialist in political history.
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