After a laborious examination in the National Assembly, where the support of the Government, already a minority, was discreet, the budget texts arrived in the Senate in its original version. Indeed, the Social Security Financing Bill (PLFSS) could not be voted on in the National Assembly within the constitutional deadlines, and the revenue part of the Finance Bill (PLFS) was rejected by the deputies, on Tuesday, November 12.
This situation does not displease the government of Michel Barnier, who haven’t had to use yet of article 49.3 of the Constitution – which allows a text to be adopted without a vote – and can now count on a chamber that is much more favorable to it. Due to the government alliance between the right, which reigns in the Luxembourg Palace, and the Macronists, 66% of senators belong, on paper, to groups that support the government.
Since 2017, the governments appointed by Emmanuel Macron could only count on a few dozen senators. Now, with the 130 senators of the Les Républicains (LR) party, the 60 of the centrist Union group – which brings together in particular the elected officials of the MoDem and the Union of Democrats and Independents (UDI) – the 20 of the Macronist group of the Assembly of Democrats, Progressives and Independents (RDPI) and the 19 of the group Les Indépendants-République et Territories (with a majority Horizontes), are 229 senators out of 348 who are favorable to the government.
“They can’t find their position”
An evolution that resulted, thanks to the influence of the president of the Senate, Gérard Larcher (LR), in the massive and unprecedented arrival of 10 senators to the government. Six come from the LR group, among them its emblematic president for ten years, Bruno Retailleau, in the Ministry of the Interior. This return to responsibility put an end to thirteen long years of lack of government for the senatorial right. Although, with its 130 seats, the LR group remains first in the Senate, it has never occupied so few seats since the merger of the right with the UMP (LR’s ancestor) in 2002.
In fact, the election of an opposition that some describe as radical, even visceral, since Emmanuel Macron came to power in 2017, has scared more than one. With, as a result, the creation of the group Les Indépendants-République et Territories, favorable to Macronist governments. And although, since 2022 and due to the lack of a majority in the Assembly, the presidential and LR sides in the Senate have been able to recover their language, their return to power is considered revenge.
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