While the deputies start this Monday the examination of the draft budget 2023, the discussions promise to be tense. With in the minds of everyone in the Assembly, the famous recourse to Article 49.3 of the Constitution to pass this text without a vote.
Article written by
Posted
Update
Reading time : 1 min.
When will the ax of 49.3 fall? The deputies start Monday in the hemicycle the tumultuous examination of the draft budget 2023, a text that the government is already preparing to pass without a vote, for lack of an absolute majority for the macronists.
>> “We try not to think about it”: the majority faces the specter of a dissolution of the National Assembly
Behind the scenes, the question is not even whether but when the government will resort to it. “It will be before the weekend“, thus predicts a key actor of the majority. “Even if we let the proceedings unfold, in the end, we will not escape the accusation of brutality”, he slips to franceinfo. To put it another way, we might as well not let the ordeal last: troops who are exhausted to take blow after blow, defeat after defeat, the oppositions joining forces to push through amendments against the government’s advice.
The 25 amendments which were adopted in committee represent an additional cost of some 7 billion euros, estimates Jean-René Cazeneuve, the general rapporteur for the Budget. “Unsustainable or reckless spending“, it is the red line reminds Matignon. According to a familiar with the Elysée, it is therefore possible that the Council of Ministers will deliberate as of Wednesday, October 12 on the possibility of drawing. But the 49.3 cannot be a “preventive tool“, recalls an adviser to the executive, who considers it essential that the French take the measure of the deadlock situation.
Within the government, it is judged that the atmosphere of the National Assembly this Monday, October 10 will set the tone. The appointment is therefore made at 4 p.m. with the start of the session which must open with the intervention of the ministers and the various political groups. Then the Assembly will begin, probably on Tuesday, to tackle the more than 3,000 amendments tabled on this first part of the finance bill (PLF), which includes in particular a “tariff shield” of 45 billion euros against the explosion of energy prices. MEPs must first consider the 2023-2027 budget trajectory. Less important than the PLF, this programming bill was rejected last week in committee to the chagrin of the government, which fears consequences for the payments of European funds to France.