A divisive bill calling into question the ban on multiple mandates, which seemed poised to be adopted Thursday evening in the National Assembly, was ultimately unable to be voted on due to lack of time. sufficient, at the end of an electrical session. The Horizons group, which had included this text on the menu of its day reserved in the hemicycle, denounced an “obstruction” of the left, after it slowed down the debates until midnight, with sub-amendments , reminders of the regulations and other requests for suspension of sessions.
The “parliamentary niches” dedicated to a group necessarily stop at midnight, without the possibility of continuing another day, the examination of the bill cannot resume. “We will come back to it!” promised Horizons MP Naïma Moutchou. The text aimed to “relax” a 2014 law, adopted under François Hollande and applied since 2017, which prohibited being both a national parliamentarian and holder of a local executive mandate. With the objective of renewing elected officials and feminizing Parliament, but also of guaranteeing that elected officials devote themselves fully to their mandates.
The text of the deputies of the party of Edouard Philippe, allies of the macronists of Renaissance and the Modem group within the presidential majority, proposed to only partially return to this principle. It again authorized deputies and senators to exercise the functions of deputy mayor (but not mayor), or vice-president (and not president) of a department or region. Their proposal would undoubtedly have been adopted at first reading in the event of a final vote. A vote on its main article was thus won with 64 votes to 44.
“Regression”
Supported by the right and the far right, and fiercely opposed by the left, it was divisive within the presidential camp. But in a sparse hemicycle during the night session, the Renaissance deputies favorable to the initiative were over-represented, according to an executive from the group.
“A balance has been broken within our Republic,” argued Horizons MP Henri Alfandari, who carried this text, judging that Parliament should benefit “from figures firmly anchored in a territory” to “counterbalance republican Jacobinism”. “This debate must be held, it is normal, it is healthy, it must not be repressed,” said the Minister Delegate in charge of Local Authorities, Dominique Faure, at the start of the evening, without speaking out either for or against the text. The debate thus opened will feed “the collective decisions that will come” later, she added.
“It is difficult to understand why the debate is being put back on the table as it appears to be a regression,” said Ludovic Mendes (Renaissance), on the other hand, whose group had granted freedom of vote to its members. During a meeting during the week, a majority of Macronist deputies positioned themselves against a return to the accumulation of mandates.
But some were in favor of it, like the deputy Karl Olive, who even defended amendments on Thursday lifting the ban on accumulation, including for mayors, like the deputies Les Républicains (LR, right) . “Never has our country gone through so many storms caused by the absence of field sensors,” argued LR MP Pierre-Henri Dumont. For Bruno Bilde (RN), due to the lack of local roots of the deputies, “it is the administration which takes the place left vacant”.
“Nostalgia for the baronies”
The left formed a united front in the face of the challenge to non-cumulation, emphasizing the risk of accentuating distrust towards parliamentarians. Sensing a possible adoption of the text as midnight approached, the Socialists tabled dozens of sub-amendments at the end of the session so that there would be no vote.
“I am not sure that there are many deputies or senators who have time to do something other than their parliamentary mandate,” argued communist deputy Elsa Faucillon. “You are disconnected”, launched the Insoumis Carlos Martens Bilongo to the Horizons deputies, while the ecologist Charles Fournier criticized them for nourishing “a sort of nostalgia for local baronies”. Erwan Balanant (Modem) also contested the “false solution” of returning to accumulation, also recalling “that 50% of us are local elected officials”, without executive mandate.
This is not the first time that non-cumulation has been called into question. The Assembly rejected a senatorial text in 2021, which had already embarrassed the Macronist majority at the time, accused of being “out of character” after the yellow vest crisis.