The Senate is preparing to vote on Tuesday, November 23, the “revenue” component of the 2022 finance law. Or rather, is preparing not to vote this budget. Thus, at the opening of the meeting, the president of the Les Républicains group, Bruno Retailleau, will go up to the rostrum and explain why his group is opposed to this text.
It will be a thunderclap at the Luxembourg Palace! Because the immediate consequence of the rejection of the “revenue” component is the interruption of the budget review. This means that the second part of the text, on expenditure, will not be debated. This is the section devoted to departmental appropriations.
Why come to such extremes? Because between the initial version presented in September in the Council of Ministers and the current text, there were many adjustments linked to announcements by the executive: the “tariff shield” to limit the rise in the price of gas and electricity ; 34 billion euros in investment spending under the France 2030 plan; the plan for Marseille … But also the “youth engagement contract”; the inflation check; the measures for the harkis … So many expenses, added as the budget is examined by Parliament, which make Bruno Retailleau, the head of the Republicans in the Senate, say that “everything is adulterated in this text. “
For the executive, the risk is only political. Impossible to attend the equivalent of an American “shutdown”, when the administration finds itself penniless and has to close public services for a few days. In France, the government can always, as a last resort, implement the finance law by way of ordinances. The executive will probably not need to get there, the text falling to the National Assembly, and to the deputies acquired by Emmanuel Macron, who have the last word on the budget. But the Senate wants to mark the occasion, five months before the presidential election.
Moreover, the last time that the upper house of Parliament rejected a finance law, it was already before a presidential election. In 2016, the right had refused to examine the text, while there, the “expenditure” part was still discussed.
Change of strategy this time on the part of the Republicans, who wanted to take advantage of the debates to put forward proposals. “The more the campaign will advance, the more the veil of illusions will tear“Predicts Bruno Retailleau. The budget review was already an opportunity to try to snatch part of it.