After several unsuccessful attempts in Parliament, the Senate voted again on Tuesday to direct part of the Livret A savings towards the defense industry, affected by financing difficulties reinforced by the Ukrainian context.
Military and industrial tools must be able to face any threat to peace and stability. This is not really the case today, alarmed Les Rpublicains senator Pascal Allizard, author of this bill adopted 244 votes against 34.
The text proposes to direct part of the outstanding Booklet A and the Sustainable and Solidarity Development Booklet (LDDS) towards the financing of companies in the French defense industry.
A similar measure had already been adopted in Parliament in recent months, but the Constitutional Council had censored it twice, judging it to be unrelated to the texts to which it had been added.
The senatorial right hopes to see it finally result in this dedicated text, even if this will require the National Assembly to take it up. An almost identical bill will also be supported on March 14 by deputies from the Horizons group.
The Minister for Business, Olivia Grégoire, nevertheless offered a mixed reception to this proposal, believing that the instrument (was) not the most appropriate. While promising that Bercy would bring together financial players, investors and defense industrialists in the summer for a major event on financing the sector.
Socialist senator Rachid Temal defended another vision: that of a dedicated product – the Sovereignty Defense Savings Book -, synonymous according to him with greater clarity and transparency. But the Senate rejected it.
Environmentalists and communists were more severe. You want to finance the gun merchants by taking from the booklet with which the French thought they would finance housing or sustainable development, worried the ecologist Thomas Dossus.
Nearly 60% of the Livret A and LDSS funds are in fact dedicated to social housing, but the rest – non-centralized savings precisely targeted by the text – is dedicated to SMEs, the energy transition or even the social economy and united.
Several favorable parliamentarians insisted on the urgency imposed by the Ukrainian context. It is an effective short-term solution to accelerate the transition to a real war economy, argued Vanina Paoli-Gagin (centre-right group Les Independants).