Elisabeth Borne faced with the risk of 49.3
The Prime Minister has so far dismissed the hypothesis. Having recourse to article 49.3 of the Constitution which would allow the pension reform to be adopted, Thursday, March 16, without a vote, was akin to such vileness that Elisabeth Borne hardly dared to pronounce the cursed figure. Monday, March 13, a few days before the parliamentary deadline, the idea of such a forced passage was no longer taboo.
At Matignon, the former Minister of Labor and her teams do the accounts ” day by day “ and keep charts to identify votes for or against, abstentions and undecided. “We don’t read in a crystal ball, we work. We won’t go to the vote if we know we’re going to lose.”we decide in the Prime Minister’s office where we promise to ” fight “ to avoid this nightmare scenario.
The Head of Government, like the President of the Republic, agreed during their weekly lunch on Monday of the ” beat » and some ” line ” : it is necessary to try the vote until the last minute but not to play dice by risking the failure of the adoption of a text deemed crucial for public finances. “If the reform does not pass, it is a huge passport for immobility”warns Eric Woerth, Renaissance deputy for Oise and former member of the Les Républicains (LR) party. “A 49.3 would be less elegant than a vote but no less legal”relativizes the senator Renaissance of the Côte-d’Or François Patriat.
Elisabeth Borne refuses to make it a personal matter. But trigger the eleventh 49.3 since taking office at Matignon – and the hundredth under the Ve Republic – would amount to recording its own failure. For three months, the Prime Minister has not been able to get the unions on board, standing up against the project to raise the starting age to 64. It hardly convinced public opinion, the majority hostile to the reform.
Doing without a vote from the Assembly would mean that the leader of the majority has also failed to convince a sufficient number of deputies, despite the many concessions granted to the right and its allies of circumstance, The Republicans (LR). The reform that Emmanuel Macron described in January as ” democratically validated” through his re-election as President of the Republic, would take on the appearance of a project imposed against the will of the population and its representatives.
“Transpartisan” censure motion
The oppositions are already preparing to respond to what they equate to a denial of democracy. The deputy of the Marne, Charles de Courson, issues for example ” the idea » to table a motion of censure “transpartisan”. The centrist was to talk about it before Thursday with the members of his group Libertés, Indépendants, Outre-Mer et Territoires (LIOT), with the Socialist Party (PS) and the Communists. A handful of LR deputies could join his initiative. This motion would collect the votes of the elected representatives of La France insoumise (LFI), in a hurry to overthrow the government and those of the National Rally (RN). “If the government uses 49.3, we will table a motion of censure and we will also vote on all of the motions of censure that could be tabled”, warned Marine Le Pen, representative of the far-right party, on Monday, judging this possibility « delusional[e]».
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