In this new political year, the executive made no secret of new recourse to article 49.3. Wednesday September 27 in the evening, while the public finance programming bill (LPFP) was to begin to be discussed in session at the National Assembly, Elisabeth Borne triggered from the hemicycle this provision provided for by the Constitution, which allows the government to adopt a text without a vote.
“No group is ready to vote for this essential text for our country. This text has already been rejected at first reading. We need this law to program our public finances. We cannot take the slightest risk,” declared the Prime Minister shortly before midnight, at the end of debates which began at 9:30 p.m.
Elisabeth Borne defended a text of “responsibility”, in terms of “sovereignty”, “clarity”, with regard to the “ecological transition” and France’s “European commitments”.
A “49.3 dependent” government, denounces the left
The left-wing alliance New Ecological and Social Popular Union (Nupes) announced that it was tabling a motion of censure against the government, a few minutes after the Prime Minister’s announcement.
“This is the only way to defend ourselves for the National Assembly” in the face of the use of article 49.3, denounced the leader of the deputies of La France insoumise (LFI), Mathilde Panot, on behalf of her party as well as socialists, communists and ecologists. This text will lead to “social and ecological mistreatment that we cannot accept,” she added.
“We have a government that is 49.3 dependent,” castigated his socialist counterpart Boris Vallaud. “The government must understand that it cannot manage France through 49.3,” declared for his part the president of the independent Liot group, Bertrand Pancher.
“We have taken our responsibilities”, retorted the general budget rapporteur Jean-René Cazeneuve (Renaissance), denouncing groups, “diametrically opposed” on financial issues, “but [who] combine only to beat the government” .
A first failure in December 2022
The LPFP sets the country’s budgetary trajectory until 2027 by detailing the steps to reduce the debt burden and return the public deficit to below 3% (to 2.7% of GDP) at the end of the five-year term. “This text is fundamental for the budgetary credibility of the French nation,” declared the Minister of the Economy, Bruno Le Maire, on September 25, before the Finance Committee of the National Assembly.
The executive argues that France is committed to providing a trajectory for Brussels to be able to obtain 17.8 billion euros over the period 2023-2024. Arguments that most oppositions refute. “Nothing allows us to assert that the absence of adoption would be a sole reason for blocking payments”, and the government “remained free to modify its budgetary policy to find a majority”, insisted the president of the finance committee , Eric Coquerel (LFI).
In December 2022, in a hemicycle heated by the fall budget debates, the government failed for the first time to have an LPFP adopted.
Since her arrival at Matignon in May 2022, this is the twelfth time that the Prime Minister has used this constitutional tool. The eleventh 49.3 dates back to March, when it was triggered in the heated hemicycle of the National Assembly in order to pass the pension reform.
Elisabeth Borne, whose government had subsequently almost been overthrown by nine votes, had then assured that “the objective that [she] sets for the future is: no 49.3 outside financial texts”. Then Emmanuel Macron returned to this commitment from his Prime Minister.
Sunday September 3, Ms. Borne confirmed the government’s desire to use new 49.3 to have the 2024 budget adopted, arguing: “Oppositions consider that voting for a budget means belonging to a majority. The oppositions will not want this, it is entirely respectable, and we will certainly have to resort to 49.3 this fall, because our country needs a budget. »
An extraordinary session to preserve the joker
Paragraph 3 of article 49 of the Constitution allows the Prime Minister, “after deliberation of the Council of Ministers”, to “incur the responsibility of the government before the National Assembly” on the vote on certain texts. Its use is seen as a forceful passage in a National Assembly where the presidential camp finds itself deprived of an absolute majority since the last legislative elections.
Since the 2008 constitutional revision, the use of 49.3 has been limited to a single text of law per parliamentary session, with the exception of finance and social security financing bills, for which the government can use it without limitation.
Public finance programming laws do not fall into this scenario, and are considered as ordinary laws. The government therefore tried until the last moment to convince opposition deputies to vote for the LPFP, without succeeding – in recent days, the Republicans and the National Rally left the suspense hanging.
To have this LPFP adopted, which is so important in the eyes of the majority, but without depriving itself of its only wild card for the ordinary parliamentary session, the government has therefore put in place a stratagem: the use of an extraordinary session. The deputies have in fact returned early: the ordinary session will open on October 2.
