Budget 2025: accused of seeking a rejection of the text, the government continues setbacks in the Assembly

Article 49.3 appears more and more inevitable, while the government continues setbacks on its 2025 finance bill, in the National Assembly where difficult debates continue this Saturday. As expected, the deputies will have little chance of reaching the end of the examination of the recipe part before midnight this Sunday. A strategy, according to the opposition, which suspects the “common base” of playing the constitutional delay card.

Against the advice of the Minister of the Budget, Laurent Saint-Martin, the deputies thus decided in the morning to make permanent the exceptional contribution requested from maritime freight companies, and capped the tax niche from which this sector benefits at 500 million euros. . They also approved a gradual reestablishment of the CVAE (Contribution on the added value of companies) and deleted an article providing for an increase in the “penalty” for gasoline and diesel cars.

These opposing votes took place in a hemicycle where the forces of the “common base” supposed to support the government were, as since the beginning of the week, very sparse, with variable alliances. If the RN mixed its votes with the left to cap the tax niche for shipowners, the New Popular Front alone obtained the progressive reestablishment of the CVAE, and it is a motley alliance of elected RN, LR, socialists and communists who got the better of the car penalty.

The RN targeted

Already on Friday, the government had suffered numerous defeats on this “revenue” part of the budget, with the removal of the temporary surtax on large businesses, after the left had significantly increased the rates, or the removal of the increase in the electricity tax, fought by his own troops.

“We are used to the economic program of the National Rally changing every three months, generally moreover, to the rhythm of interviews with (its president) Jordan Bardella. But finally, there, visibly, the program is not yet stabilized,” quipped MP David Amiel (Together for the Republic, ex-Renaissance). The RN accused the groups supporting the government of engaging in a “sabotage operation (…) of the budget through their absence”.

MPs “at the end of their tether”

Opposition deputies suspect the government camp of pushing for a 49.3, by allowing Michel Barnier’s draft budget to be profoundly reworked. Others wonder if he is not instead seeking a rejection of the text, as in the Finance Committee, which would allow its transmission to the Senate, without even having to examine the “expenditure” part of the budget.

The deputies of the common base “are exhausted and are demanding 49.3” but the government “has an interest in going to the vote”, analyzes a deputy of the New Popular Front. The government can also choose to resort to article 47 of the Constitution, according to which if the Assembly cannot decide at first reading on a finance bill after 40 days (November 21 ), he seized the Senate.

This question of constitutional deadlines was invited into the debates on Thursday, pushing the left to announce the withdrawal of a quarter of its amendments and EPR of a “hundred”, in an attempt to finish the examination of the text this week, before the solemn vote on Tuesday.

But it seemed very unlikely at midday on Saturday that the deputies would finish the examination before midnight, given the 1,850 amendments remaining to be discussed. Failing this, the debates will resume on November 5, after examination of the social security financing bill. Unless the government shortens the discussions by activating article 49.3.