The National Assembly on Wednesday rejected a first article of the Social Security budget, relating to the accounts of all social security administrations, a setback with limited consequences for the executive which plans to use 49.3.
This introductory article of the Social Security financing bill (PLFSS) includes the accounts of the Social Debt Amortization Fund (Cades) or the supplementary retirement schemes, in addition to those of the branches of the compulsory schemes.
An expanded scope which makes it possible to display positive balances in 2023 and 2024 in the accounting tables presented.
The Cades surpluses generate a positive balance while the Social Security accounts show a deficit of 8.8 billion in 2023, denounced the socialist deputy Jérôme Guedj.
It is an accounting table which disguises an austerity policy, said the communist deputy Pierre Dharville.
His environmental colleague Sbastien Peytavie also deplored a photograph which enshrines the austerity trajectories fixed with 49.3 a few weeks ago in the multi-year budgetary programming law.
RN MP Jolle Melin, for her part, mentioned a photomontage of social accounts.
The Minister of Public Accounts, Thomas Cazenave, defended in vain this preliminary article aimed at better informing Parliament. He rejected the term austerity launched by the oppositions.
The suppression amendments tabled by the left, the RN and the independent Liot group were adopted with 102 votes to 75.
The deputies expect that the debates on this PLFSS, which started Tuesday in the hemicycle at first reading, will be quickly interrupted by the government’s recourse to a new 49.3, like last week for the state budget.
This constitutional tool would similarly allow the adoption of the revenue part of the PLFSS without a vote on first reading, unless a motion of censure is adopted.
The government could integrate the amendments of its choice, among the more than 3,000 tabled.