When to remove 49.3 from the 2023 budget? “It will not be today, or tomorrow, or this week,” said Bruno Le Maire on RTL this Thursday. “I will take the time that is necessary with the Minister in Charge of Public Accounts Gabriel Attal, as I said at the opening of the budget review,” assured the Minister of Economy. And to insist: “We have time.”
For Bercy’s boss, this text deserves an “in-depth debate” because “you choose your expenses, your income, the amount of taxes, which public service to support as a priority.”
“If there is even the slightest chance of not presenting a 49.3, we will seize it, because the budget is a fundamental act in the life of a nation”, explained Bruno Le Maire.
What moment in a difficult sociopolitical context?
However, this scenario is almost impossible. The use of 49.3 is not in doubt since the presidential field only has a relative majority in the National Assembly. The opposition announced for several months that they would vote against the budget proposed by the government. From the left we criticize the government’s austerity, while the right considers, on the contrary, that there are too many expenses foreseen in this text.
“We will vote against the budget, a marker of a policy that we challenge,” also indicated Marine Le Pen, leader of the deputies of the National Association (RN) in the Bourbon palace.
The issue that really worries the government is the calendar. Since the beginning of the week, the presidential field has been going through setbacks in the National Assembly. Whether on the 2023-2027 budget programming law that the opposition has disrupted; or more recently in the review of the 2023 budget on Wednesday during which the deputies, at the initiative of the MoDem – still a member of the relative majority – voted in favor of a tax on superdividends against the advice of the government.
Therefore, the executive could be tempted to move quickly to control the content of the bill and deploy its measures as quickly as possible. A possibility that he will always have if he uses 49.3 later, but then he would have to decide whether or not he maintains the amendments rejected or voted in the Assembly against his initial opinion.
“It would be a democratic fault”
Also with the social context as a backdrop. The list of obstacles on the way to the executive is long, with the ongoing strikes at the TotalEnergies and Esso-ExxonMobil refineries, the possibility of a general strike next week at the request of the CGT and the march against the high cost of the coexistence organized by the different components of the Nupes this Sunday.
This could lead the presidential camp to continue the budget debates to show that it is doing its best to move the discussions forward and then blame the opposition.
Invited to the Public Senate this Thursday, Eric Coquerel ruled that the government would use 49.3 “early next week.” “I keep telling the government that they shouldn’t use 49.3,” he explained.
“I know that he has an institutional right. But politically it would be a democratic fault, and it is also his mistake. [Le gouvernement] must recognize that it does not have a majority in the Assembly”.
Source: BFM TV
