A literal application of the law, but at what cost? The repeal of retirement at age 64 will not be discussed this Thursday, June 8 in the hemicycle. The President of the National Assembly Yaël Braun-Pivet confirmed this Wednesday, June 7 on BFMTV that she would declare “inadmissible” the amendments of the Liot group aimed at restoring the starting age to 62 years. The decision was expected, but triggers the fury of the opposition. In response, the LFI group promised to table a motion of censure against the government.
The deputy for Yvelines relies on article 40 of the Constitution to bury the flagship measure of Charles de Courson’s bill (PPL), removed last week in the social affairs committee. This text prevents deputies from tabling a bill or an amendment degrading the public accounts. “This article 1 should never have been examined by the National Assembly because it creates charges […] It is not in accordance with the Constitution,” said Yaël Braun-Pivet.
Power had no choice but between bad solutions. Go to the vote, at the risk of accepting a symbolic defeat in the session. Disconnect Liot’s initiative, even if it means undergoing a trial for authoritarianism. Between these two evils, he chose the second. “It’s plague or cholera, recently noted a Renaissance executive. But I prefer the negative solution in which the Constitution is applied.”
Braun-Pivet on the front line
This strategy enjoys a consensus in the majority. By activating article 40, Yaël Braun-Pivet repairs his relationship with his camp. The chosen one has been accused for weeks of being too timid in the face of Liot’s offensive. Many Renaissance deputies deplored his refusal to convene a bureau of the National Assembly to censor the PPL.
The maneuver was quick, but would have created a precedent under the Fifth Republic: a delegation from the Bureau had validated the PPL when it was filed at the end of April. “She guaranteed all political groups the possibility of filing PPLs. Contrary to what part of the Renaissance group asked her, she added reflection between action and reflection, it was perhaps not a bad idea,” slips a Horizons MP.” “She achieved her goal without creating any precedent,” adds another.
The ace. The case has crystallized the nagging criticism against the fourth character of the state. We paint the portrait of a woman with relative loyalty, more concerned about her personal image than the interests of her family. The self-proclaimed defender of the institutions tends to forget that he belongs to the majority.
Difficult to stay overhanging when the boat is pitching. Under pressure from her family, Yaël Braun-Pivet resolved to go to the front. “She has only one compass, the defense of our institutions, defends Renaissance deputy Gilles Le Gendre. This can lead her to make decisions that disturb and successively arrange our majority and its oppositions.” A Renaissance leader is more severe: “She loses on both sides: in the majority, which does not feel supported. In the opposition, which says that it goes back on its word.”
“We are organizing the blocking of the Assembly”
The left denounces indeed “an attack of an unprecedented scale on the parliamentary initiative” and has decided to boycott the meetings launched by Yaël Braun-Pivet with a view to a possible reform of the institutions. “Braun-Pivet would be just another henchman of Macron? We will never accept such a coup”, fulminates on Twitter the president of the rebellious group Mathilde Panot, who wonders about the ability of the deputy to preside. the National Assembly after this episode. Here is the guardian of the institutions portrayed as a vote breaker under the orders of the Elysée. In the majority, some advised him to convene an office to protect himself: the decision is collegial, the responsibility shared.
And now ? This psychodrama will feed the tensions between Macronie and Nupes: two irreconcilable camps, with relations poisoned by the situation of relative majority. “Article 40 will lead to the blocking of the Assembly, recently feared a pillar of the majority. This text will return in another form in another niche, like that of LFI.” The end of the parliamentary session promises to be noisy. But mayhem does not necessarily mean paralysis. The National Assembly adopted the nuclear stimulus bill less than a week after resorting to 49.3 on pension reform.
The future of PPLs in question
Finally, this sequence questions the future of legislative work. From the Liot affair arose a conflict of competence between the president of the Assembly and that of the Finance Commission, the rebellious Eric Coquerel about article 40 of the Constitution. “Who is the keeper of the text?” Asks the Horizons deputy François Jolivet in substance. This question is all the more burning since the presidency of the Finance Commission has been held since 2009 by a member of the opposition. Between the incumbent and the boss of the Assembly – in essence a member of the majority – political interests diverge.
Macronie’s strategists maneuvered with finesse. Article 1 of the Liot PPL turned into a simple amendment after the vote by the Social Affairs Committee and is rejected as such. Formally, no PPL has been revoked. In spirit, it’s something else. However, the PPL enjoy a historic tolerance in the examination of their admissibility, for the sake of protecting parliamentary initiatives. This custom is all the more consensual as the costly PPLs of the opposition are intended to be rejected by an absolute majority.
By sweeping away Liot’s initiative, is the President of the Assembly tying the hands of parliamentarians in the future? “We organize our powerlessness”, worries a Renaissance deputy, when others insist on the exceptional nature of Liot’s approach: a text at 15 billion euros is not very common. Still, the review of the next PPL by Eric Coquerel will be closely examined. “We will have to be very vigilant and not give him the opportunity to have fun”, anticipates a Renaissance deputy. This politico-legal guerrilla in any case gives ideas to the partisans of budgetary orthodox. A convinced liberal, Renaissance MP Guillaume Kasbarian calls for a “rigorous interpretation” of Article 40. “There is no reason not to apply it. Especially since the parliamentarian is not a notebook of checks and that we can make useful PPL without spending public money.”