Can you present yourself as a beacon in the fog when you only represent 8% of the hemicycle of the Palais Bourbon? Laurent Wauquiez and Bruno Retailleau want to believe it in any case. Three days after having managed to obtain three positions within the Bureau of the Assembly, the right is trying to impose itself as the pivotal force in the French political landscape. Thus, on Monday July 22, the leader of the Republican Right (DR, ex-Les Républicains) in the National Assembly and the leader of the Les Républicains senators in the Senate put a legislative pact on the table.
The result of “joint work” between Republican senators and deputies, the text claims to “respond to the urgency of the situation” in which the country has been plunged since the dissolution that occurred on June 9. This, by the establishment of 13 laws, selected in accordance with the respect of the three major priorities listed by the DR leader in the lower house: the restoration of authority, the relocation of industrial, artisanal and agricultural production and the strengthening of public services by tackling “bureaucratization”.
Spearheads of the right
The legislative texts included in the contract cover a range of key themes that extend from security to “competitiveness” via justice, immigration, food sovereignty, and even education and health. Almost every piece of legislation includes old right-wing threads. Such as the introduction of minimum sentences, the replacement of state medical aid with emergency medical aid, or the “systematization” of obligations to leave French territory for foreigners who have been refused asylum.
Another totem measure of the heirs of the UMP, and even more so since the riots that marred France in July 2023: the elimination of family allowances in the event of a minor’s conviction, as well as “the creation of short sentences in dedicated establishments”. Two proposals contained in a law called “juvenile justice”, which also provides for the immediate appearance of defendants under the age of 18, and the extension of the length of pre-trial detention.
Unsurprisingly, the idea of ”promoting working France” […] rather than welfare” is also elevated to the rank of priority. And is expressed through a law on “purchasing power and encouragement to work”. The text provides, among other things, for the establishment of a “single allowance of around 70% of the minimum wage”. “Each euro saved thanks to the fight against the abuses and excesses of welfare will go to reducing charges in order to gradually bring net salary closer to gross salary”, argues a document listing all the proposals.
Compromise without compromise
On the tax front, the right is committed to ensuring that no additional taxes will be levied. Alongside “stopping the deterioration of public accounts” and not reducing retirement pensions, the promise is one of the three red lines set by Les Républicains for their future allies. Several tax reductions are also provided for in the pact. In the “competitiveness” law, for example, LR proposes to reduce production taxes, but also taxation on transfers of mid-sized companies and SMEs. The text entitled “energy programming and transition law” promises to “remove the increase in the carbon tax”.
A slew of proposals that could translate into projects or bills if an agreement with the presidential camp were to be ratified in the coming weeks. Thus, the leader of the Republican Right at the Palais Bourbon committed to “voting for and supporting” each of the measures “contained in the pact”, regardless of the executive that would agree to take them on. While hastening to specify that it was in no way a government coalition. “We are independent and we will remain so”, hammered home the champion of the independence of the Republicans.
A way of twisting the neck of the criticisms to which Laurent Wauquiez exposes his political family by submitting a legislative agreement to Macronie. This morning again, his counterpart in the Senate, Bruno Retailleau, reiterated on BFMTV that the LR did not wish “to enter the government, nor into a coalition”. A “clarification”, according to the now consecrated term, which did not however prevent Eric Ciotti from lecturing on X “the alliance […] with Macronism” assimilated to “a rupture, a betrayal of the people of the right”, sneers the deputy of Bouches-du-Rhône. The same one, who a month earlier, was chased from the presidency of his party for having tried to embark it in a Faustian pact with the RN.