“Those who brandish article 40 undermine the right of the opposition”

2023-05-28 06:00:40

Lexecutive and his ” majority “ will have succeeded in familiarizing the French with articles 47.1, 49.3 and 44.3! So many procedures used repeatedly to shorten, block the debates, even avoid the votes. A quarantine of parliamentary democracy is thus established.

We hadn’t seen everything. Here is now that article 40 is brandished! Approaching a bill (PPL) tabled by the LIOT group [Libertés, indépendants, outre-mer et territoires] in view of its parliamentary niche on June 8, the Macronist camp panicked. He fears, rightly, the adoption of this PPL repealing the postponement of the retirement age. He therefore thought for a while – he may come back to this – of using parliamentary filibuster.

But another scenario has its preference. Prevent the law from being debated via article 40.​​ The latter limits the power of initiative of parliamentarians in financial matters. It prohibits any creation or aggravation of a public charge, and authorizes the reduction of a public resource only insofar as it is compensated by the increase of another resource.

Read the decryption: Article reserved for our subscribers Pensions: the majority united to avoid a vote on the bill to repeal the reform

The section 40 lock

I support the repeal of this article. It establishes an inequality between the executive, whose bills are not required to comply with article 40, and the legislature, for which this is the case. Most parliamentary democracies live well without it, and many in our Assembly wanted to repeal it – even my predecessor, Eric Woerth, in June 2018! But for the time being, I have to make do with it since, as chairman of the finance committee, it is up to me to judge the financial admissibility of bills. Except that I make a point of favoring parliamentary debate by adopting a flexible assessment of Article 40 based on solid legal arguments. Indeed, this control can evolve according to the legislative modifications, the appreciation of its users and thus of the jurisprudence.

This is why Macronie is worried about my decision. Everything is good to activate the lock of article 40. The pressure on me, of course: ministers, general rapporteur, presidents of the groups, and now the president of the Assembly become so many constitutionalists who order me to declare its inadmissibility. We even go so far as to imagine twisting the law and the regulations to invent a way around my role. As in demanding that the office – or even the general rapporteur of the finance committee – divest me of this role. Which would come back to the constitutional revision of 2008 and, since then, its constant application. The latter wants, firstly, that the chairman of the finance committee is now a member of the opposition and, secondly, that he judges financial admissibility. Unless he is prevented, which leads him in this case to delegate this function to the rapporteur or to a member of the office. By proceeding in this way, the legislator wanted to grant a new right to opposition.

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