There were around a hundred of them at the start of the 2021 school year, here they are at just over sixty in this month of September. In one year, the situation of the deputies Les Républicains (LR), who meet during parliamentary days, in Biarritz (Pyrénées-Atlantiques), on September 15 and 16, will have changed a lot. Firstly because with the disappearance of 40% of its workforce, the group is no longer the leading opposition in the National Assembly. He thus loses a number of privileges in terms of speaking time and media audience. Then, because with the absence of an absolute majority for the Macronist deputies, it is a funny dance with LR which has taken place in the Hemicycle.
The observation is simple: without the assent of the right, or failing that, its abstention, the majority cannot, a priori, pass any legislative text. LR thus depends on all the desires for reform or action of the government of Emmanuel Macron. Decimated in the presidential ballot boxes, saved at the margins during the legislative elections, the right finds itself today in the position of a pivotal group.
However, this place of arbiter has also proved to be complex to grasp for the group in general and for each deputy in particular. Everyone is faced with a permanent dilemma in the face of the presidential majority: should the government’s texts be voted on or not? How to exist in the Hemicycle, being wedged between the majority and the other opposition groups?
On the one hand, the LR deputies are sorry not to be credited with having worked for the adoption of popular measures, alongside the macronists; on the other, they note that the elected representatives of the New Popular Ecological and Social Union (Nupes) and those of the National Rally (RN) will always make more noise than them, when it comes to opposing the government .
Embodiment and communication problem
The right had the bitter experience of this this summer. Admittedly, the LR deputies, pampered by the majority and the government, were able to pass a number of amendments to the purchasing power text and to the amending finance bill. While it struggled to get the slightest measure passed during the previous five-year term, the right thus obtained the possibility for employees to have their RTTs redeemed or even the reduction in the price of gasoline by 20 euro cents.
However, as many of its elected officials have been able to see with great regret in their constituencies, it is impossible to reap the benefits. The voters see it rather as the fact of the majority.
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