The deadline for voting on the 2025 budget is getting shorter by the day, and the situation is getting more complicated for “Parliament”, Christian Eckert claims on franceinfo.
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The Parliament “will be restricted in a certain number of requests”while the deadline for voting on the 2025 budget is getting shorter, analyses Christian Eckert, former general rapporteur of the budget of the National Assembly and then Secretary of State for the Budget under François Hollande, on franceinfo on Friday August 30. “The government, whatever it may be, will have a certain advantage over Parliament”says Christian Eckert.
On Friday, MPs Éric Coquerel (LFI) and Charles de Courson (Liot), respectively president and general rapporteur of the Finance Committee of the National Assembly, sent a letter to the resigning Minister of Public Accounts, Thomas Cazenave, to receive “documents” linked to the 2024 and 2025 budget. If this is not the case on Monday, Eric Coquerel warns that they will proceed to “an investigation on the premises and on site”.
Christian Eckert says “understand and approve the approach” by Eric Coquerel and Charles de Courson “who have this power”. The former Secretary of State at Bercy remembers receiving “requests for hearings” or some “focus on this or that subject”but has never seen the heads of the Finance Committee in the National Assembly force the door of the Ministry of the Economy. “I dare to hope that they will be heard and that we will not be forced to come to that.”
Christian Eckert is keen to emphasise the difficulty that Parliament finds itself in with regard to the government. “There has always been an asymmetry”recalls the man who was both at Bercy, on the side of the executive power, and at the National Assembly, on the side of the legislative power. “Parliament has a few administrators”nothing to do with “the army of senior officials of Bercy” who in addition to that have “all financial or demographic data”.
In this political situation without a government, deputies and senators “will have even fewer delays” to analyze the future budget and vote on it. “This will increase the difficulties for parliamentarians” to set up “desired reforms”. Christian Eckert points out among others “Article 40, which many are unaware of, will prevent parliamentarians from increasing or burdening a certain number of expenses that they might legitimately wish to.”
It is therefore, according to Christian Eckert, “completely abnormal” that the Finance Committee meets for the start of the school year without any working basis. Just like the fact of “to find oneself without knowledge of the details, at least of a summary of the budgetary decisions that the government is preparing to propose.” A situation “completely baroque”judges the former general rapporteur of the budget of the National Assembly, who points out the responsibility of Emmanuel Macron in this affair: “The President of the Republic could not ignore it. He was a minister, he was deputy secretary general of the office of the President of the Republic. He knows the stakes of these steps which are phased in time.”