Rows of very thin Renaissance MPs this Thursday. Just getting started, the Social Security budget took a hit after Elisabeth Borne drew the 49.3 card again. If the government has been embarrassed by the opposition it is because many elected officials have practiced empty seat politics.
“Very quickly, we guess the end of the play”
From the beginning of the text, the tone was set. The deputies of the opposing camps, more numerous than the elected macronistas, in a relative majority since the last legislative elections, have constantly put the executive in a minority.
“We did not come there to suffer. Very quickly, we guessed the end of the play, so we wanted to get to the conclusion quickly,” deciphers Prisca Thevenot, spokeswoman for the group with BFMTV.com.
In fact, the first article that allows the validation of Social Security spending for the year 2021, is mostly rejected with 84 votes against and only 66 in favor. Enough to anger Gabriel Attal, Delegate Minister of Public Accounts, who expressed his “very great astonishment” at this result.
Deputies “disappointed”
“This kind of environment where we see all the things that could have been voted on with the oppositions in committee finally being rejected in the chamber can clearly discourage some,” replies bluntly Fadila Khattabi, chair of the Social Affairs Committee.
In the seats on the right, after the speech of the tenant of Bercy, the tone is mockery, recalling the deputy Thibault Bazin that “it is up to the government to mobilize the 240 deputies of the majority”.
No call to come and sit en masse
If the message seems received – the following article is approved with 2 votes – the first part of the PLFSS, which allows closing Social Security accounts, is also largely rejected a few minutes later. After another diatribe from the minister, Marine Le Pen deciphers the subtext.
“We have a little feeling that you are exaggerating the outrage, perhaps because you are about to release a certain article,” analyzes the president of the RN group.
Renaissance, however, has a tool to defeat impeachment when its troops are not numerous enough in the face of opposition to pass texts: a Telegram loop that asks deputies to attend the meeting.
If this loop has the “attractiveness of total infantilization”, says a deputy who even sees it as “almost physical harassment”, this time it has not been fed much.
“No need to redo the budget trick”
“It is also management. We have exhausted Members who did not much appreciate sitting down for 55 hours on the budget without actually being able to change the text. It was not worth doing the same with the Social Security budget”, deciphers a ministerial adviser.
After more than 8 days of debate on the finance bill, the amendments voted on in the chamber, and sometimes supported by majority deputies, were not retained. This is, for example, the case of the tax on superdividends, defended by the Modem, or the modification of the EHPAD that sought to lower the bill for residents. To the chagrin of some deputies.
“It is true that with us, our elected budget specialists have let loose. We needed to ask ourselves a bit, after a bit of frustration,” summarizes Horizons deputy Frédéric Valletoux.
A possible third 49.3
Enough to push the Prime Minister to go to the National Assembly less than 8 hours before the start of the debates to trigger 49.3. If the maneuver shortens the debates, it sends a strange signal, far removed from the dialogue staged during the finance bill.
The Government could draw this constitutional letter again next week to have the Social Security budget approved in its entirety, of which a final part still remains to be examined.
Source: BFM TV
