the idea of ​​a face-to-face meeting every Wednesday with Gabriel Attal divides the deputies

Should we reserve the government question session on Wednesday for the Prime Minister alone, like the English? The formula is under debate and the presidents of the groups in the Assembly will discuss this option on Tuesday.

Three quarters of an hour of verbal jousting between the Prime Minister and the deputies is the latest idea from the President of the Assembly to revitalize questions in the government on Wednesday. The group presidents will discuss it on Tuesday March 26 in the afternoon. Yaël Braun-Pivet had proposed this format to Élisabeth Borne, in vain, but his successor Gabriel Attal is up for it. “For him it would be very beneficial”according to an executive advisor. “It’s a way of cajoling the elected representatives of the majority and treating the opposition.”

On the left, deputies say “why not” in this new exercise, where they would only clash with the Prime Minister. Their hope is to end “the mediocrity of the responses of certain ministers”. However, an environmentalist warns: “It risks becoming a 100% com session with zero funds”. The boss of the LR group Olivier Marleix will survey his troops in a group meeting, because opinions are divided. There are the “100% for“, just to give “the importance” to their questions, and those who do not have “don’t really want to take scuds from Gabriel Attal”. As for the National Rally, the deputies like the idea so much that they attribute its authorship to Marine Le Pen. “If people are fighting to say it’s my idea, that’s a good sign”laughs someone close to Yaël Braun-Pivet.

Real debates or “an Attal show”?

In the majority, there is no consensus on the idea. Some dream of “real English debates”. In London, in fact, the Prime Minister faces the parliamentarians of the House of Commons alone on Wednesdays. According to an executive from the Renaissance group it can “reinterest the deputies while the Wednesday session is a desert”. The desert is to be taken literally, even in the majority many dry out. But if it becomes “an Attal show”, a Macronist promises that he will come back. Except that the concept does not appeal to everyone. “It is bullshit”squeak MoDem deputies, for whom “this will transform the Prime Minister into a spokesperson for the government”. The Horizons group is also “reserve”. A deputy sees it as “significant risk” for Gabriel Attal: “He will concentrate all the attacks on his person, it will completely demonetize his ministers.”

If the 100% Attal question scenario is validated by the group presidents on Tuesday, implementation could be rapid. Matignon will still have to give his final agreement, but in this case the experiment could begin next week, on Wednesday April 3, to be tested until the summer. “And if it doesn’t workchairs the assembly, we won’t lack the imagination to try something else!”