In the United States, a blockage in Congress can lead to the closure of the federal administration due to lack of funding. But, in France, there are alternatives to provide the State with a budget.
“In a relative majority, to pass the budgetary texts, we need the tool of 49.3.” On France Inter, Sunday October 1, the President of the National Assembly, Yaël Braun-Pivet, defended the highly contested article 49.3 of the Constitution, to which Elisabeth Borne had resorted, on September 27, for the twelfth time of her mandate . The Prime Minister thus had the public finance programming bill (LPFP) adopted, without a vote from deputies on the text itself. Yaël Braun-Pivet insisted on the importance of this law, “which we cannot do without”. But she also touted 49.3 as an antidote to a threat that regularly looms on the other side of the Atlantic.
“Look, where it doesn’t exist, in the United States, we avoided the ‘shutdown’ (…) at the last minute, last night”, launched the President of the Assembly. “Shutdown” is the English term for the shutdown of the federal government when Congress cannot reach an agreement to pass a budget, and Washington can no longer pay civil servants or finance public services. An agreement reached on September 30 temporarily postponed this risk until November 17. In France, “49.3 allows us to avoid this”, she assures. But can we really transpose this American concept to France? Franceinfo asked the question to lawyers.
There is an alternative if the budget is not passed
“The word ‘shutdown’ describes a situation which cannot be legally transposed to the French system”explains constitutional law specialist Jean-Pierre Camby to franceinfo, associate professor at Versailles-Saint-Quentin University. In the United States, the lack of agreement between the president and Congress on the federal budget triggers a total blockage of spending and levies, which requires negotiations to get out of this situation. In the meantime, public services dependent on the federal administration must close due to lack of funding, and federal civil servants are no longer paid. Such a scenario would have even more drastic consequences in France, where public services depend more on the central state.
The French Constitution was written to avoid this situation. “In France, if we don’t have a budget, we no longer have a State”, underlines Jean-Pierre Camby. Article 47 of the Constitution therefore provides that as a last resort, “if Parliament has not decided within seventy days [sur le projet de loi de finances]the provisions of the project may be brought into force by ordinance” by the government. Thanks to this device, “in France, ‘shutdown’ is impossible, unless the government is crazy and chooses itself not to resort to orders”, summarizes Benjamin Morel, lecturer in public law at the University of Paris Panthéon-Assas. This is already what AFP responded to Gabriel Attal, who raised the specter of “shutdown” during the debates on the budget in 2022.
The text adopted thanks to 49.3 does not set the budget
The comparison made by Yaël Braun-Pivet applies even less to the last use of 49.3 by Elisabeth Borne, four days earlier, on a text which does not determine the State budget. We should not, in fact, confuse the public finance programming law (LPFP), for which the Prime Minister has made the government responsible, with the finance bill (PLF). It is the latter which is the text in which the government submits to Parliament the state budget for the following year.
The PSSA, contrary to what its name might suggest, is not a budgetary text. It actually defines the government’s budgetary trajectory in the longer term, until the end of the five-year term, and it is not binding. Its role is, among other things, to reassure the European Commission of France’s intention to reduce its deficit below the threshold of 3% of gross domestic product, which is theoretically a condition for receiving European funds.
What would have been the consequences if the government had not used this weapon to pass the PSSA? This is what happened in 2022, and the National Assembly rejected the text, which is why the government had to present a new one at the start of the school year. This did not, however, prevent the budget for 2023 from being adopted (by recourse to 49.3), and the government from continuing to function. Finally, “if this text is not adopted, it has no other impact than the European Union rolling its eyes”concludes Benjamin Morel.
By his defense of 49.3, Yaël Braun-Pivet seems to prepare the ground before the debates on the 2024 budget, which will begin on October 17 in the Hemicycle. To have it adopted, the government already recognizes that it will undoubtedly draw this constitutional weapon again.