Ten. This is the number of times that Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne has triggered Article 49.3 of the Constitution since June 2022, in order to have the 2023 finance bill adopted without going through the votes of the deputies of the National Assembly. This “constitutional weapon” could again be used to pass the highly contested pension reform bill, against which the inter-union is mobilizing on Thursday. But beyond 49.3, the executive could use another much lesser-known article of the Constitution: 47.1.
Cut short the debates in the Assembly
Never used under the Fifth Republic, article 47.1 can only be used in the context of “social security financing bills”, can we read in the Constitution. The pension reform ticks this box, because the government has decided to integrate it into the bill for the amending financing of Social Security (PLFRSS).
Concretely, 47.1 would allow the government to speed up the procedure for examining the text by the National Assembly to pass it to the Senate. “If the National Assembly has not decided on the first reading within twenty days after the filing of a bill, the Government seizes the Senate which must rule within fifteen days”, is it written in the Constitution. In total, Parliament has 50 days to decide, otherwise “the provisions of the draft can be implemented by ordinance”.
In fact, this would allow the government to play on time and cut short the debates in the National Assembly, when they already promise to be agitated. Therefore, it would be up to the senators to vote on the text, themselves within a given time (15 days as the Constitution emphasizes).
Getting senators to vote on the text, an advantage for the executive?
A significant advantage for the executive because the Senate, mainly composed of elected Republicans, seems to be in favor of postponing the legal retirement age to 64 years. During his wishes to the senators, the president LR of the Senate, Gérard Larcher, did not hide that he considered the pension reform “necessary”, even if it “[suscitera] social mobilizations and passionate debates”. Before adding that the envisaged reform is “not very far from what has been proposed with consistency and in a spirit of dialogue by the senatorial majority for four years”.
And if the Senate fails to agree, Article 47.1 allows the government to ask Parliament to pass the text by ordinance. But nothing is yet decided because, beyond the Senate, the Constitutional Council could reject the bill, to avoid any “misuse of procedure”, as the president of the institution, Laurent Fabius, pointed out before journalists on January 13. “We do not want any abuse of procedure. We will refer to the sincerity of the parliamentary debate,” he said, as reported The chained Duck. “If a text arrives in the Senate without a prior vote of the Assembly, it is embarrassing.”
If the executive still decides to use 47.1, the countdown could be launched as early as January 30, the day when the deputies will begin to examine the text on the pension reform in committee. As for the debates in the National Assembly, which already promise to be stormy, they will begin on February 6th.