It’s the week of all dangers. After the vote on Saturday evening by the Senate of the amending social security financing bill for 2023, which contains the pension reform, the coming days will be decisive for the text, and, beyond that, for the government, both the fate of one and the other is now linked. This time, it is not a formula of circumstance.
Wednesday takes place the Joint Joint Committee (CMP). The government is counting on a dynamic following the adoption of the text by the CMP to put pressure on all parliamentarians. The meeting takes place in the National Assembly, because the last depending on the Social Affairs Commission took place in the Senate. The composition of the CMP is as follows: five parliamentarians from the presidential majority (three Renaissance deputies, one MoDem deputy, one Renaissance senator), four LRs (three senators and one deputy), one centrist Union senator, one LFI deputy, one deputy and a PS senator, an RN deputy. It is the bill as passed by the Senate that is studied by the CMP. Nothing prevents us from coming back to certain points: for example, uncertainty hovers over the concession made in mid-February to everyone’s surprise by Elisabeth Borne, who announced that those who started at 17 could leave at 60, after forty-three years of work. “We will see if this point is still in the final version,” says an adviser to the executive. The measure costs some 300 million euros.
That same day, the Council of Ministers takes place, at 10 a.m., well before the CMP has finished its work. In Elisabeth Borne’s mind, it was out of the question to seek authorization to use 49.3 at this time: it would be sending a very bad signal when the 14 parliamentarians were working on a consensual version. In addition, the executive couple wants to avoid carrying the weight of the reform alone. “Many parliamentarians dream that we use 49.3 to escape their own responsibility,” points out a minister.
It is always possible to urgently convene a ten-minute Council of Ministers at any time, which issues the authorization to use 49.3. This has already happened in the past on several occasions and Emmanuel Macron remembers it better than others: on Tuesday May 10, 2016, at 2.30 p.m., a Council of Ministers met to authorize the Valls government to use 49.3 in order to that the Labor Bill be adopted – against the wishes of the Minister of the Economy at the time, the young Emmanuel Macron.
Thursday morning, it is the Senate which must approve the text resulting from the CMP. This choice comes from a trick of the government: as the upper house is better disposed than the Assembly with regard to the project and as the deputies want to complete the vote on the text for the acceleration of nuclear power in France without delay, it been given satisfaction. The idea is that the senators approve the pension project and put the deputies up against the wall.
49.3 or not?
Thursday afternoon, the deputies are in turn looking at the version from the CMP. As La Palice would say, one of two things: either they adopt it, or they reject it. Due to vacant seats, the majority in the National Assembly is 287 votes. Matignon would like to trivialize a possible failure by proceeding, in the event of rejection, to a new reading, within the constrained timetable as imposed by Article 47.1 of the Constitution: Parliament has fifty days to decide (since the presidency of the National Assembly registered the bill) otherwise the provisions of the bill can be implemented… by ordinance. The cut-off date is Monday, March 27 midnight. It is still necessary that Emmanuel Macron accept this politically complicated scheme of a new reading: it is not easy to ask parliamentarians to change their minds so quickly.
49.3 or not? Elisabeth Borne may be tempted to play her all to save her own skin, but Emmanuel Macron may be thinking more of his reform than of the fate of his Prime Minister. If the executive finally chooses to use 49.3 – the 100th of the Fifth Republic – the text is adopted without a vote, but the opposition will file a motion of censure: 60 deputies must sign it for it to be debated. The LR group (61 deputies today) is unable to table one, since a good part of its troops are in favor of the text, but a censure from LR would be the most likely to be voted on both by the Nupes and by the RN. The Socialists have recalled these days that they will not mix their voices with the far right, although this does not bother LFI.
“I think Elisabeth Borne is threatened anyway”
What happens if censorship passes? The Borne government is immediately overthrown. There is only one precedent in the history of the Fifth Republic: in 1962, the Assembly adopted a motion of censure to counter the bill on the election of the President of the Republic by universal suffrage. The Pompidou government falls, de Gaulle dissolves… and reappoints Georges Pompidou after the legislative elections. Emmanuel Macron already let it be known a few months ago that in the event of censorship, he too would proceed with a dissolution – whereas he can constitutionally appoint another government.
If the text is voted on by the two assemblies, the Constitutional Council will probably be seized by parliamentarians and will have one month to decide. But what follow-up will the social movement have? In The Sunday newspaper, the secretary general of the CFDT Laurent Berger declares: “If the Parliament votes the text, it will have to be taken note”, but he makes a distinction in connection with an adoption after use of 49.3, which he qualifies as “democratic vice “. For his part, Philippe Martinez (CGT) explained on BFM on Friday: “If this text passed, it would jeopardize democracy.”
On the purely political ground, the case will leave traces in all cases. In the absence of censorship in the Assembly, the fate of Elisabeth Borne and the government depends on only one man, Emmanuel Macron. “I think she is threatened anyway, I would not have said it a fortnight ago. At the Council of Ministers I feel that she is annoying”, says a minister (who does not particularly appreciate her, must he specify?). The head of government, she already has plenty of projects in mind, in order to open a new page. But that’s really another story.