Emmanuel Macron is looking for a way out. Stuck in the crisis caused by the passage “in force” of his pension reform, the Head of State tried to project himself on the rest of the quinquennium, Wednesday, during his interview on the 1 p.m. news from TF1 and France 2. The president claims to have asked Elisabeth Borne “to build a legislative program, a government program, (…) to have both fewer legal texts, shorter, clearer texts, to also change things for our compatriots in a more tangible way”. This strategy aims to find a majority sometimes with the left and sometimes with the right of the Hemicycle. Can it pay off?
“Macron does tactics and tinkering”
The immigration bill, which the Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, has been preparing for almost a year, is the first to bear the brunt of this new situation. The text, which was to be examined next week in the Senate, will finally be “cut” into several parts. In a letter addressed to Gérard Larcher, of which AFP had a copy, the Prime Minister, Élisabeth Borne, claims to seek “the best method in order to move forward as quickly as possible […] without jeopardizing the ambitions […] both on the immigration control aspect and on the field of integration”. Clearly, the executive could only keep certain measures to hope to find allies on the right of the hemicycle on the first part, and on the left on the second.
But this perspective has already been criticized by the opposition. “There is no question (…) of a text that is sliced up”, replied Thursday on LCI the president LR of the Senate. “Emmanuel Macron finally realizes that he does not have a majority and therefore plays tactics and tinkering. He wants to cut an important text into small pieces to find a majority on the right and then on the left. It’s politics through the small end of the telescope, ”abounds Eric Pauget, LR deputy for the Alpes-Maritimes. Within the left too, several elected officials have expressed their dissatisfaction with a “rather baroque method”.
“We did it before, we will continue”
But in the majority, we do not despair of moving forward on the next bills that will be presented to Parliament. “We did it before, we will continue to do it. To work on shorter, more concentrated texts, which will also allow parliamentarians to amend and debate. It is clear that despite our relative majority since this summer, we have voted with the right or the left on texts on purchasing power, on renewable energies, on violence against women, on nuclear energy…”, lists Prisca Thévenot, MP for Hauts-de-Seine and spokesperson for Renaissance.
Despite the announcements of the Head of State on the new method, the presidential camp therefore does not imagine a revolution within the two Chambers. “The president wants to believe that with this relative majority, we can move forward, in particular on the future text on work, that of the reform of justice and on green industry”, assures François Patriat, patron of the elected Renaissance in the Senate. . “If in the coming months, the demonstration is made that we can no longer legislate, at that time, a decision will have to be taken,” he adds, referring to a reshuffle or even a dissolution. There remains a solution, briefly mentioned by Emmanuel Macron on Wednesday. “Not everything goes through the law and we go through the law too much in our Republic,” he said.
Does the president envisage sometimes governing without having to go through parliament? “Each MP now wants a law in his name, there are too many bills that are useless. So everything that can be done by decree, to make life easier for the French, must be done, ”answers François Patriat. A track that also makes the opposition elected officials jump.