headache ahead in the Assembly and the Senate in the event of a special session

The risk of sitting until the Olympic Games is starting to give parliamentarians a cold sweat.

An extraordinary session is a lot of debate. The government can decide to postpone the parliamentary recess by adding more or less important final texts to examine, with the possibility of using an additional 49.3. In a relative majority situation last summer, parliamentarians finished on July 23 instead of the end of June.

But this year, the situation is not the same, because at the end of July, we will be at the gates of the Olympic Games which begin on the 26th. And the National Assembly is right in the middle of the system. Imagine the crowds in the center of Paris, along the banks of the Seine! “We are framed by the sports fields, the Concorde, the Invalides. We are going to have an accessibility problem”, worries a pillar of the Bourbon palace. According to our information, the president of the National Assembly Yaël Braun Pivet and the boss of the Senate Gérard Larcher are pleading for an end of session on July 14 at the latest.

Holidays pushed back to July 19?

Otherwise, according to this same source, it will be complicated for everyone. For the staff of the two chambers, 4,000 people in the Assembly alone, but also for parliamentarians whose constituency is not in Paris. And there are a lot of them. Many trains are already full during the period, not counting possible strikes at the SNCF, and closed metro stations nearby. In addition, voting “tt”, while teleworking, is not possible.

Will there really be texts left to pass? There will be no amending finance bill, Emmanuel Macron rules it out, but there will be several on the table: end of life, agriculture, business simplification, social housing… Agenda level, on the executive side, “nothing is completely decided”, assures an advisor, with the possibility of pushing until July 19, a short week before the start of the Games. A member of the majority hopes to ease up sooner. “Better”he said, “take care of people, the country will celebrate” and let “the president has fun, goes and distributes medals” before the return to politics which will already turn towards the end of his mandate.