2023-09-30 07:13:37
Shortly after midnight and after long debates, the verdict fell: the motion of censure from the left-wing alliance Nupes – the first of this season – was largely rejected during the night of this Friday to Saturday. She received 193 votes out of the 289 needed to bring down the government. This rejection leads to the adoption in a new reading of the public finance programming law 2023-2027. Nupes tabled this motion immediately after the activation of 49.3 to have the 2023-2027 public finance programming bill adopted without a vote.
It was without much risk for the government since the Republicans did not intend to vote for it. Conversely, the National Rally once again supported the left-wing motion of censure, accusing Élisabeth Borne of “brutalizing democracy” to “satisfy the European Commission”.
Six months earlier, at the time of the pension reform bill, a transpartisan motion of censure had been narrowly rejected, by nine votes. This episode is neither the first nor the last: Élisabeth Borne was faced with her 18th motion of censure since her arrival at Matignon.
Borne’s pikes at “the two extremes of the hemicycle”
The speaker of Nupes, the socialist Philippe Brun, immediately attacked the Prime Minister. “Your dismissal, your departure, all the French people ask me every weekend,” he said to Élisabeth Borne, smiling.
The deputy for Eure accused the government of “favoring with the greatest servility a very well-endowed minority of the French”, despite “an immense inflationary crisis”.
Emmanuel Macron “tried to make Parliament disappear with his repeated 49.3”, he again accused.
Élisabeth Borne preferred to reserve her barbs for “the two extremes of the hemicycle”, LFI and RN. “Demagoguery is your only budgetary course! “, she told these two groups.
“You can cry about austerity, it won’t change the facts!” The investments are there,” she said, citing in particular “40 billion” for the ecological transition in 2024 or the increase in “teachers’ salaries of at least 125 euros per month”.
More 49.3 to come
And there will undoubtedly be more in the weeks to come. The government should use this constitutional weapon to have the draft state and social security budgets adopted, because it only has a relative majority in the National Assembly.
The public finance programming bill plans to reduce the public deficit from 4.8% of GDP in 2022 to 2.7% in 2027, below the European objective of 3%, in a context where the debt burden explodes.
“Worst austerity trajectory”
The executive is particularly keen on this text which, according to him, conditions the payment of European aid to France of 17.8 billion euros over the period 2023-2024. “Clearly, the country needs these 17 billion euros,” estimated Olivier Marleix (LR).
An argument that the left refutes, which intended to challenge the “austerity cure desired by the government” through this motion of censure. “It’s not only the brutality of 49.3, it’s also the brutality of what’s inside,” accused the head of the rebellious deputies Mathilde Panot on Friday on Sud Radio. “This is the worst austerity trajectory that our country will have experienced, since we are being asked to make 70 billion savings by 2027.”
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