And four. The government has activated Article 49, paragraph 3, of the Constitution Wednesday, November 2 to have the entire finance bill (PLF) 2023 adopted at first reading, announced Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne. This constitutional provision allows the government to pass a text without a vote – unless a motion of censure is passed by a majority.
At the rostrum of the National Assembly, Mr.me Borne estimated that “the exchanges in committee allowed substantive debates (…)at the end of last week, the debates in the hemicycle allowed frank and nourished discussions”.
However, she regretted, addressing the deputies, “Monday, during the examination of the credits of the ecology, development and sustainable mobility mission, with 15 billion euros of new expenditure punctured on essential programs, you profoundly upset the coherence of the balances of the text”. “Since the conditions for a constructive dialogue are no longer met (…), we must react”she further justified.
This is the fourth time in two weeks that the government has used 49.3, after it did so for the revenue parts of the PLF and the Social Security Financing Bill (PLFSS), then for the entire PLFSS.
This new appeal puts an end to the debates on the “expenditure” part of the draft state budget for 2023, which were far from over. Among the budgetary appropriations which remained to be examined were those of local authorities. The debate on this subject promised to be explosive in the hemicycle, and the government, deprived of an absolute majority, risked exposing itself to new disappointments during the votes.
Socialists against “the trivialization of motions of censure”
Immediately, the deputies of La France insoumise (LFI) announced that they were filing a new motion of censure against the government. Like Mondayand since the National Rally supported a motion supported by all of Nupes, the LFI group is going it alone on the left in this depot.
“It is not a fundamental difference, we will find ourselves on a motion of censure rather on the end of these texts” budgets, in December, assured the leader of the rebellious deputies, Mathilde Panot. Socialists “refusal[ent] the trivialization of motions of censure”commented their spokesperson, Arthur Delaporte, on the same line as the environmentalists.