Discussed from 4 p.m., these motions respond to the constitutional weapon of 49.3 drawn on Wednesday by the head of government to pass without a vote the revenue part of the finance bill, the first part of the state budget.
On behalf of the 151 elected members of the left-wing coalition, the president of the environmental group Cyrielle Chatelain will present the Nupes motion of censure to denounce the government’s “contempt” for Parliament and criticize a “climate irresponsible” budget.
“And this motion of censure is first of all to have a vote. Otherwise, there would be no vote on the budget, which is supposed to identify the priorities of the country”, she underlines with the AFP.
Then will come the turn of Marine Le Pen for the RN. The motion of the 89 far-right deputies, co-signed by the non-registered Nicolas Dupont-Aignan, accuses the government of a “denial of democracy”, because it “erased with a stroke of the pen about fifty amendments, yet voted ” at the National Assembly, before the shutdown of 49.3.
The joint discussion should last some two and a half hours, not counting Elisabeth Borne’s response. Then the deputies will vote in the neighboring rooms of the hemicycle. Only votes for motions are counted.
They have a priori no chance of winning the absolute majority of 289 votes, necessary to bring down the government.
Because neither the Nupes nor the RN intend to support the rival motion. And the right has already warned that it would not vote for them so as not to “add disorder to disorder”.
“If one day we have to vote for a motion of censure, it is the one we will have chosen to table. And we do not refrain from doing it”, commented Sunday on Radio J Olivier Marleix, the leader of the deputies LR.
Under the Fifth Republic, only one motion of censure was adopted, in 1962, bringing down the government of Georges Pompidou.
In the absence of an absolute majority for the Macronists in the Assembly, this 49.3 is probably the first of a long series during this budgetary fall. Elisabeth Borne has already triggered a second on Thursday on the Social Security budget, with another Nupes motion at stake, which could be examined Monday evening or Tuesday.
– “Blocking” –
The presidential camp is trying to trivialize the use of this article 49 paragraph 3 of the Constitution which could be drawn a dozen times to pass the budget of the State and that of Social Security by Christmas.
“What those who table motions of censure are proposing is to add crisis to crisis by ensuring that France does not have a budget and by overthrowing the government”, underlined Sunday on France Inter the Minister of Public Accounts Gabriel Attal.
The first two are “those that count, the others will be technical. It must be explained to the citizens”, estimates the MoDem Erwan Balanant, to play down.
And with motions of censure, “it will be very interesting to see what the difference is between the Nupes and the RN: (…) We see that there are still a lot of votes that they achieve together. And I fear that they will always find themselves in the criticism, always in the blocking vis-a-vis the government”, attacks the deputy Renaissance Mathieu Lefèvre.
A rejection of the motions of censure would allow the adoption of the first part of the finance bill (PLF) for 2023 and the passage to the examination of the second, devoted to expenditure, from Thursday.
In the version of the budget submitted to 49.3, the executive had every opportunity to retain the amendments of its choice. He kept a hundred, but neither from the RN nor from LFI and not the most sensitive.
It is the government which “lacks a sense of compromise and has not understood the result of the legislative elections”, judged Marine Le Pen on Sunday evening on TF1. According to her, “the government uses 49.3 as a tool to circumvent the will of the French”.
In the name of fiscal stability, the government rejected a proposal by the MoDem, in the majority, to increase the taxation of “super dividends” from large companies. Fighted by the Minister of the Economy Bruno Le Maire, the measure had obtained the support of the left, of the RN, but also of around twenty elected Renaissance officials.
In this 2023 budget, the government claims a balance between the control of public finances and the “protection” of the French, thanks to a “tariff shield” of 45 billion euros to limit the increase in regulated tariffs to 15%. electricity and gas.
