Deputies, like ministers, no one seems to want the current form of questions to the government anymore. Yaël Braun-Pivet will bring together the presidents of groups in the National Assembly on Wednesday to try to find a solution. This is the information from the brief.
The questions to the government eventually got boring. The move to a single two-hour session on Tuesday emptied the room. MPs never set foot there “because it’s just theater”, others take a look around before going to make phone calls outside the hemicycle. An elected official is saddened, even though there were 28 questions asked that day, “if we ask the 24th we know that the subject will have already been largely blunted before”.
>> Why the traditional “Questions to the government” are being deserted by more and more MPs
The ministers are not thrilled either. “It’s long and painful,” sighs a minister. “The second hour no one listens anymore”laments one of his colleagues, and the worst, he says, is that there are “too much noise to work effectively on your files”, just to pass the time. An opposition group president says: “Some ministers send us little notes during the session to find out if there are still any questions for them and if the answer is no they leave!”
The return of two sessions per week?
On Wednesday October 4, the President of the Assembly therefore brings together the group presidents to invent a new operation. This will not be an easy task because no one finds the current format optimal, but from there to agreeing on a new formula… Yaël Braun-Pivet proposed ideas such as shortening the duration of the questions or reducing their number. This is a categorical no for LFI which refuses any reduction in speaking time… or only if it is the majority who sacrifice themselves! “They only ask boilerplate questions”judge the rebellious, “questions that are useless”, supports an LR deputy.
>> Parliamentary reserve: deputies from all sides want the return of the system
The Macronists may not like the idea of cutting back on their speaking time. Otherwise LFI and the National Rally advocate a return to two sessions per week, this was the case until 2019, an avenue also put forward by Yaël Braun-Pivet. “The other proposals are rubbish”, says someone close to Marine Le Pen.
The problem is that Wednesday is devoted to questions from senators, who will never want to make this slot very popular because it takes place after the Council of Ministers. In short, the meeting to find a new formula promises to be lively. A jaded minister concluded thus: “They take us for game and decide between themselves how they are going to organize the hunt, without asking our opinion”.