For the fourth time in a fortnight, Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne on Wednesday engaged her responsibility before the National Assembly to have the second part of the 2023 Finance Bill adopted. “Since the conditions for a constructive dialogue are no longer met (…), we must react”, justified the head of government in the hemicycle, deserted before she took the floor by the LFI deputies while those of the presidential camp welcomed her standing.
This new use of Article 49.3 of the Constitution
whose shadow had been hovering over the deputies for several days, puts an end to the debates on the part “expenses” of the draft state budget for 2023, far from having come to an end. Among the budgetary appropriations which remained to be examined were, in particular, those of the local authorities. They promised an explosive debate in the hemicycle, and the government, deprived of an absolute majority, risked exposing itself to new disappointments during the votes.
With this new 49.3, the finance bill (PLF) for 2023 will be considered adopted without a vote at first reading by the Assembly, unless a motion of censure is adopted in the coming days, a highly unlikely hypothesis. The text will then pass to the Senate.
The first part of the PLF and the Social Security draft budget have already been adopted in the Assembly with the same decried method. And the motions of censure drawn to respond to it all failed, even those voted jointly by the RN and the Nupes (LFI, PS, EELV, PCF), for lack of support from the LR deputies.
New motion of censure
The scenario should repeat itself a fourth time, surrounded by the same questions: will the motion that LFI immediately announced that it wants to file once again have the support of the RN? The presidential camp had criticized a “collusion” with the far right.
The RN group will decide on Thursday whether it also files one. Within Nupes, divided on the strategy to adopt, will support for this new motion tabled only by LFI erode further? Monday, 22 votes of the left allies had failed during the vote on the motion of the Insoumis on the Social Security budget, including those of the boss of the PCF Fabien Roussel and the socialist Valérie Rabault. A “aberration”, according to former LFI presidential candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon, judging that “under the pretext of ‘refusing RN voices’, they actually end up, without daring to say it, by supporting the Macron government by refusing its fall”.
This new 49.3 also puts on the table the sensitive question amendments that the government will retain or reject in the text it wants to pass, among those adopted by the National Assembly against its opinion – it has carte blanche in the matter. The Prime Minister assured that the government would not erase everything with the stroke of a pen, citing among the amendments which would be retained some “of those adopted during the examination of the appropriations of the overseas mission”.
“Allies Once Again”
She also cited “Additional 7 billion euros to protect businesses and communities against rising energy prices” or “wage increase” support for students with disabilities (AESH).
But no trace of the amendments of the ecologists and the PS, which had added a total of nearly 12 billion euros for the thermal renovation of housing, with the support of the RN. Dressed in orange vests and surrounded by a large police force, environmental activists blocked traffic on Wednesday in front of the Assembly to ask the executive to keep these measures. “With 15 billion euros of new expenditure, punctured on essential programs, you have profoundly upset the consistency and balance of the text”, said Elisabeth Borne on Wednesday, pointing to an RN and a Nupes “allies once again” around these expensive measures, which according to her justify her new use of 49.3.
These amendments would notably have the effect of“abolish”depriving it of funding, the “tariff shield“, this flagship measure of the first draft of the State budget of the new five-year period, which should limit to 15% the increases in regulated gas and electricity prices. This budget, which the right finds too expensive and the left not enough ambitious, also provides for a salary increase for teachers or the creation of more than 10,000 civil servant posts.