“The repeated use of article 49.3 to have budgetary texts adopted is becoming a burden for Elisabeth Borne”

2023-11-14 06:30:15

Monday, November 13, Elisabeth Borne was not in the hemicycle of the National Assembly to once again hold her government accountable for a budgetary text. While traveling in Ireland, the Prime Minister delegated this thankless task to the Minister for Relations with Parliament, Franck Riester, aware of the fact that the repeated use of article 49.3 to have the finance and security financing laws adopted social at all stages of their discussion became lead for her. Confirmed at Matignon during the summer, Elisabeth Borne has, in fact, not found the conditions for new momentum since.

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Erected as a symbol of the coup during the pension reform, article 49.3 certainly does not convey the same emotional charge on budgetary texts. In the majority as in the opposition, everyone ended up, willingly or unwillingly, by integrating three facts: the country needs a budget to function; there is currently no alternative majority to defend another policy; the government is not illegitimate in drawing the weapon offered to it by the Constitution to avoid paralysis. But the integration of these constraints has a corrosive effect on democratic functioning.

From the moment the groups know that the discussion will end with a commitment of responsibility from the government followed by the tabling of motions of censure doomed to failure, the preliminaries look more like a collective venting session than a serious examination of the budgetary situation of the country. The work in committee is getting tougher, the amendments are multiplying, each more surreal than the last. They serve as a showcase for opponents without really engaging them since the procedure makes the government the sole judge: it alone will sort between admissible amendments and those which are not before activating the fatal weapon. Not enough to restore the image of representative democracy in the midst of a crisis. Nor to promote the role of the Prime Minister, one of whose tasks is to bring the parliamentary majority to life and to accommodate its different sensitivities. MPs, lately, have had low morale, whatever their political label.

Political counter-model

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A rival sensed this and, although defeated in the summer, nevertheless went on the offensive again. A few days ago, Gérald Darmanin took center stage in the parliamentary arena by making the examination of the immigration bill in the Senate the demonstration that another political method was possible. Under pressure from the National Rally (RN), the Les Républicains party raised the stakes very high by threatening to vote against the text if all the modifications that its elected representatives demanded were not taken into account. Psychodrama was avoided. The copy was to be voted on Tuesday, November 14, certainly significantly toughened, but without being expunged from the provision which caused the most dispute: the regularization of undocumented workers in professions in tension.

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