The Senate examines the public finance programming bill on Monday with annoyance: article 49.3 activated by the government in the National Assembly limits its chances of influencing this budgetary trajectory (AFP/Archives/Thomas SAMSON)
The Senate examines the public finance programming bill on Monday with annoyance: article 49.3 activated by the government in the National Assembly limits its chances of influencing this budgetary trajectory, which the senators will tighten.
At the Luxembourg Palace at 4:00 p.m., the senators find themselves faced with a relatively atypical situation: they have on their table a text that their fellow deputies have never adopted by a vote, nor at first reading almost a year ago (rejection), nor in new reading on September 28.
That evening, Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne had engaged the responsibility of her government via article 49.3 of the Constitution to have the bill adopted without going to a vote, subsequently resisting a motion of censure from the left-wing Nupes alliance.
49.3 cannot be actioned in the Senate, of course, but the National Assembly has the last word in the parliamentary shuttle, which allows the government to take up its version of the text for the final examination, again with the hypothesis of see him take responsibility.
– “Effort” –
Mass therefore seems to have been said for this law taking the form of a road map for the French budgetary trajectory over the period 2023-2027, not to be confused with the traditional State and Social Security budgets examined in the coming days.
Senator LR Jean-Francois Husson on July 6, 2023 in Paris (AFP/Archives/Ludovic MARIN)
In these conditions, what role for the Senate? “He will set his own trajectory”, decides the general budget rapporteur Jean-François Husson (Les Républicains), annoyed by the executive which “does not make any effort” according to him.
The senatorial majority, dominated by the right and the center, is therefore preparing to accelerate the reduction of the deficit in its version of the text.
The government wants to reduce the public deficit from 4.8% of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2022 to 2.7% in 2027, below the European objective of 3%. The Senate, for its part, proposes a return below 3% two years earlier, in 2025, and a public deficit reduced to 1.7% in 2027.
The government plans to “stabilize” employment within the scope of the State and its operators? The senatorial right is aiming for a “5% reduction”.
“How can France consider weighing on Europe again tomorrow by being the worst student in terms of public finances?” asks Mr. Husson, when France would be one of the last countries in the euro zone to bring its deficit below 3% according to the Court of Auditors.
– “Outbidding” –
European funds are also at the heart of this budgetary trajectory: the executive is counting on it to be able to obtain 17.8 billion euros from Brussels over the period 2023-2024. Arguments refuted by most oppositions in Parliament.
In the Senate, the minority left is indignant both against the trajectory of the government, which “refuses to abandon its policy of fiscal disarmament which impoverishes public power”, and against that proposed by the senatorial right, which “takes advantage of it to stand out by going one-upmanship,” according to socialist senator Rémi Féraud.
In terms of form, he too is outraged against 49.3 brandished in the Assembly. “The government uses it as an element of discouraging parliamentary work,” he points out, “but in the Senate it cannot prevent us from working.”
Discouragement even spread for a while to the ranks of the right and the center, which considered introducing a “preliminary question” allowing it to directly reject the text before examining it. “We asked ourselves the question, saying to ourselves ‘faced with 49.3, we’re not going to bother'”, says an executive from the senatorial majority. “But it is difficult, on such a sensitive text, not to print a line.”
The upper house will therefore deliver its version to the government without much hope of obtaining anything in return… And this has only just begun because this logic risks being repeated in the budgetary texts of the autumn, with a rain of 49.3 expected.
© 2023 AFP
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