The government should trigger a new 49.3 Monday in the National Assembly for the final adoption of the 2023-2027 budget programming law and could do so without Élisabeth Borne, traveling to Ireland, AFP learned from ministerial sources on Friday. “As the Prime Minister is on an official trip to Ireland, she will be replaced in the National Assembly in the event of her government being held responsible,” according to Élisabeth Borne’s entourage.
A case which will not be a first in history
The Minister of Relations with Parliament, Franck Riester, is expected to announce this use of 49.3 in the hemicycle. “He has the constitutional right, it’s his job,” comments a ministerial source. The deputies look one last time on Monday at the budgetary trajectory until 2027, for which the government had already used the constitutional weapon of 49.3 at the end of September in order to pass the text without a vote. This bill is on the agenda of the National Assembly on Monday at 4 p.m. with a new 49.3 in sight, the 17th since Élisabeth Borne was at Matignon.
However, the Prime Minister has a trip to Ireland on the same day to celebrate the 225th anniversary of the landing of French troops in Kilcummin (north-west), on August 22, 1798, to support a rebellion against the British kingdom. She must also discuss with her Irish counterpart Leo Varadkar “on international issues” and “the major European negotiations”.
The absence of the Prime Minister to hold the government accountable to the Assembly “would not be a first”, specifies a parliamentary source. “Under Michel Rocard (Prime Minister from 1988 to 1991), several 49.3s were triggered by the Minister of Relations with Parliament or the N.2 of the Lionel Jospin government. A delegation is needed.” On December 15, 1989, Lionel Jospin, then Minister of State in charge of National Education, replaced Michel Rocard to trigger several 49.3s during a trip by the Prime Minister to Togo. And Jean Poperen, Minister of Relations with Parliament, replaced Michel Rocard in April 1991, visiting New Zealand.
49.3 could be followed by a new attempt to censor the opposition, the probable rejection of which a few days later will mean definitive adoption of this budgetary programming text. The government promises in this law to reduce the public deficit from 4.9% of gross domestic product in 2023 to 2.7% in 2027, below the European objective of 3%. The Senate, with a right and center majority, for its part demanded a return below 3% two years earlier, in 2025, and a public deficit reduced to 1.7% in 2027.