Posted Oct 12, 2022 6:05 AMUpdated on Oct 12, 2022 at 6:06 am
Things are off to a bad start for the government. Even before the examination of the finance bill for 2023 which starts this Wednesday, the executive has already lost a first budgetary battle in the National Assembly: its programming law for public finances for the years 2023 to 2027 has thus been largely emptied of its substance overnight from Tuesday to Wednesday by parliamentarians, auguring a definitive rejection during the solemn vote scheduled for October 25.
“As predictable, the marriage of the carp and the rabbit, of a left which speaks of an austere budget, of a right which speaks of budgetary drift has led to a massive rejection of the programming law”, criticized on Twitter Jean-René Cazeneuve (Renaissance), the general rapporteur of the budget at the National Assembly.
“A malicious pleasure in planting us”
Tuesday evening’s session gave the government and the majority a foretaste of the eventful and paradoxical contests that are shaping up for the next few days for the 2023 budget. Each digging their own furrows, the oppositions have hardly succeeded in making adopt the amendments they proposed. On the other hand, they found themselves and united to bring down several articles of the bill. With each time the parliamentary right in a pivotal group likely to tip the votes.
“Clearly, it was LR who took malicious pleasure in planting us”, explains a majority deputy. “Indeed, the vote on the amendments of the other groups was not possible. But the efforts proposed by the government for the recovery of the public accounts were not sufficient, this is the reason why the group voted mainly against certain articles ”, we explain within the LR delegation.
The examination had however started in serenity for the majority at the beginning of the evening. The articles passed without incident, while the amendments of the oppositions were rejected quite easily. The government could easily play on the gap separating a Nupes crying out for austerity, and the right and the far right stigmatizing the drift of public accounts.
Citadel under siege
But the atmosphere was suddenly electrified in the evening, after 10:30 p.m. The ranks of the hemicycle were largely filled with more than 400 deputies in the bays at certain times. The relative majority then took on the appearance of a besieged citadel. It was first article 11 – which framed the evolution of the workforce of the State – which fell to the applause of the opposition. “For the past few days, LR has been proposing a bureaucratic sobriety plan aimed at reducing the number of civil servants, and yet they voted against this article. Understand who can…”, laments an elected “Renaissance”.
The tone then rose in the hemicycle. Now at Renaissance, Eric Woerth was surprised at the vote of his former LR colleagues by calling on them to vote on the following article on the ministry credit forecasts until 2025. “I have the impression that the RN n probably didn’t understand this article, ”he slipped in passing. Immediately provoking the anger of elected officials from the far right, its leader in the Finance Committee, Jean-Philippe Tanguy, struck down “not to accept any lesson from Mr. Bankruptcy”. Vibe.
Unraveling the text
The boat then pitched severely for the majority. Gabriel Attal, the Minister Delegate for Public Accounts, denounced “a coalition of laissez-faire so that the deficits explode” and the “irresponsibility” of the oppositions, nothing worked: several articles were then retorted, in particular the 13, 16 and 23 devoted to the finances of local authorities, one of the most sensitive subjects of parliamentary debate.
“If we have to go until the end of the night, I will go until the end of the night” to defend the text, then launched the tenant of Bercy. The night dragged on, and the majority setbacks with it. To, in the end, lead to the unraveling of the text, rendered almost obsolete. “The vote is relentless this evening, you are in the minority”, thundered David Guiraud (LFI).
49.3 on the horizon
The announced rejection of this public finance programming law is not a surprise, since it had already been rejected by the Finance Committee. Gabriel Attal had already warned that this rejection could lead to a delay or even cancellation of the payment of funds from the European recovery plan.
This eventful session shows in any case the difficulties which are looming in the coming days for the presidential camp, while the examination of the finance bill for 2023 begins this Wednesday. Forced adoption by Article 49.3 of the Constitution is already inevitable. It remains to be seen when the government will want to activate it to avoid nights like Tuesday.