Clément Viktorovitch returns each week to the debates and political issues. Sunday February 12: the way in which the parliamentary discussion on the pension reform began.
The word comes to us from Gérald Darmanin. Two weeks ago, in an interview with Parisian-Today in Francehe accused the Nupes of wanting “border the country”. But beyond the register of language, which belongs to him, it is a position assumed by part of the left. Marine Tondelier, the National Secretary of Europe Ecologie-Les Verts, said, for example, that she wanted to transform the National Assembly into a ZAD. And in fact, since Monday, February 6, it is indeed a festival of boos, cries and slamming of desks that we have attended.
It’s a hell of a mess. But the Assembly has not become one: it always has been! The violence of parliamentary debates has been documented since the Third Republic. On a long-term scale, what we observe is even rather a movement of pacification since, until recently, offenses committed in the Assembly tended to be settled in blood. The last listed duel, in France, opposed precisely two deputies: it was in 1967, with the sword, for an insult uttered in the hemicycle.
So what we have observed since Monday is not new: it is part of a kind of folklore of parliamentary debates. What is unprecedented is the visibility that social networks have given him.
The tabling of 20,000 amendments, obstruction?
Obstruction is also as old as Parliament. In the United States, for example, there is the practice of filibusterwhich consists in pronouncing the longest possible intervention to try to prevent the passage of a law – the record, to give you an idea, is 24 hours and 18 minutes!
In France, as speeches are limited in time, it happens more by filing thousands of amendments. But it’s the same thing, it’s not new, and it’s not specific to the left. For example, in 2013, the law on marriage for all had been the subject of 5,000 amendments. It had taken 109 hours of debate to come to an end – one of the longest debates of the Fifth Republic. Moreover, among the UMP deputies who had scrapped to delay the adoption of the text, there was an eloquent young elected official: a certain Gérald Darmanin.
But the most interesting thing about this example is that it was President Hollande himself who wanted the debate to last as long as necessary. Because the reality is that today, in France, there is no more parliamentary obstruction.
In the past, yes: it happened that the debates got so bogged down that the government was forced to use article 49-3. Except that in 2008, President Sarkozy introduced a new procedure into the Constitution: “scheduled legislative time”. The principle is simple: if it wishes, the government can limit the total duration of a debate in the Assembly – generally 30 or 50 hours. Once the opposition groups have exhausted their speaking time, it’s over, their microphone is muted!
For the pension reform, it is even worse: the government has chosen to go through article 47-1 of the Constitution, which is normally reserved for finance laws. This poses a real risk of unconstitutionality, but it has the advantage of being even tighter than the scheduled legislative time. So, let’s be clear: it’s over, there is no more possible obstruction: if the government requires it, the debates take place in a limited time.
Thousands of amendments: the symbol and the strategy
The symbolic reason: it sends a message of mobilization. The strategic reason: it allows opposition groups to keep control of the parliamentary tempo. They can stop the debate on an article, or on the contrary withdraw their amendments en bloc to speed up.
But basically, the number of amendments doesn’t change anything: the groups have speaking time, they use it as they want, I don’t see how anyone could blame them. And this, not only the ministers know, but in addition, they generally did the same thing when they were deputies. When they complain about an alleged obstruction, it is pure political posturing. One can have the impression of a sterile spectacle. And it is true that the spectacle of deputies shouting at each other, even inveighing against each other, is not really in keeping with the idea that we have of the dignity of parliamentary debates. But I believe that these confrontations play a cathartic role. They are a staging, more or less conscious, of the conflicts that run through our society and which are very real. We can absolutely consider that it is better for these conflicts to be expressed in this form, even if it is a little theatrical, rather than by other means.
And above all: we must not forget that between the cries and the jeers, there are also speeches. The Assembly has the merit of giving us the opportunity to see long, extensive and often demanding debates on major political questions. So, yes, it’s true, there is little chance that MPs and ministers will succeed in convincing each other. But their exchanges allow citizens to have all the cards in hand to form their own opinion. This is called the tribunician function of Parliament, and all the same it is not nothing in a representative democracy!