The National Assembly rejected a motion of censure filed by La France insoumise (LFI) on the evening of Monday, December 18, thus adopting the 2024 draft state budget in a new reading. The motion received only 110 votes out of the 289 needed to bring down the government.
With this motion of censure, LFI responded to Elisabeth Borne’s 22nd use of the constitutional weapon of 49.3 to pass a text without a vote. The Prime Minister should once again engage the responsibility of her government on Tuesday evening with a view to the final adoption of this budget before the weekend.
Criticizing these repeated appeals, LFI speaker François Piquemal also castigated the “immigration” bill, in the midst of negotiations in the Assembly between deputies and senators on this text. He accused the presidential camp “of espousing the ideas of the extreme right.”
In a now well-established role play, Elisabeth Borne criticized “Nupes [the New Popular, Ecological and Social Union, the left alliance] of replacing ideas with invectives” and “extremely left to regularly mix its voices with those of the extreme right”. Under the protests, the Prime Minister assured to defend a “budget which considerably increases the resources of our school” and in favor of “the ecological transition”.
“Material error” on furnished tourist accommodation
Like the left, the Republican deputies criticized an amendment by the majority reintroducing into the budget advantageous tax measures to attract in particular FIFA, the body of world football, a proposal supported by the government, and which the Senate had wished to delete .
On a completely different subject, the government mistakenly retained a Senate measure to more drastically reduce the tax loophole enjoyed by furnished tourist rentals like Airbnb. It is a “material error”, admitted a government source, which ensures that the measure will not apply in 2024, despite the voices on the left and in the majority who demand it.
This new reading also takes up a “streaming tax” introduced in the Senate so that online music platforms contribute to the financing of the National Music Center.
