2023-09-06 08:20:37
Thomas Cazenave, Minister Delegate in charge of Public Accounts, and Gabriel Attal, his predecessor, during the transfer of powers to the Ministry of Economy and Finance, in Paris, July 21, 2023. GEOFFROY VAN DER HASSELT / AFP
It was a year ago, almost to the day. “We need new methods”, preached Gabriel Attal, freshly appointed to Bercy as budget minister. In the absence of an absolute majority in the National Assembly, the young minister promised to bring together the opposition before the budget debates in order to pacify the exchanges in the hemicycle and to avoid recourse to article 49.3 of the Constitution, which makes it possible to have texts adopted without a vote, which are always politically costly. “I can’t bring myself to this prospect”, he insisted in The ParisianSeptember 4, 2022.
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A year later, the results of these “Bercy dialogues” are modest: the opposition proposals – not always realistic – were quickly dismissed by the executive. And the latter have stuck to the doctrine that they do not vote, in principle, not the budget, considered the “mother of laws”, the one which, better than the others, would express the philosophy of a policy. This principled veto forced the government to resort to 49.3 eleven times in less than twelve months, each time to pass budgetary texts – including the pension reform in March.
The new Minister Delegate for Public Accounts, Thomas Cazenave, who succeeded Gabriel Attal in July, nevertheless intends to perpetuate the exercise, and received at the ministry, on Tuesday, September 5, some twenty parliamentarians from all groups, who took the floor in turn. Among those present, the chairman of the Assembly’s finance committee, Eric Coquerel (La France insoumise), his counterpart in the Senate, Claude Raynal (Socialist Party), or even the general rapporteur for the budget in the Assembly, Jean- Rene Cazeneuve (Renaissance). Another meeting is scheduled for September 19, before the presentation of the finance bill for 2024 to the Council of Ministers on September 27.
Risk of a motion of censure
The confirmation, Sunday September 3 by the Prime Minister, Elisabeth Borne, of a probable recourse to 49.3 in the autumn on the budgetary texts had nevertheless cooled the atmosphere. “We open dialogues from Bercy which will end with a 49.3, it’s still complicated…”, summarized Tuesday evening the “rebellious” Eric Coquerel. “Never much has happened in the Bercy dialogues, regretted for his part Jean-Philippe Tanguy, deputy (National Rally, RN) of the Somme, present Tuesday evening. It’s a shame because this could be an opportunity to work on issues in a cross-partisan way. But, basically, Bercy has no desire for the deputies to rummage through his affairs. »
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