“A country like ours cannot remain without a budget”: François Bayrou announces recourse to Article 49.3 “from Monday”

François Bayrou décide d'engager la responsabilité de son gouvernement, comme l'a fait son prédécesseur Michel Barnier, pour faire adopter les budgets 2025 de l'Etat et de la Sécurité sociale. MAXPPP – Alexis Sciard

In an interview with La Tribune Dimanche, to be published on February 2, the Prime Minister announced his decision to use Article 49 paragraph 3 of the Constitution to have the National Assembly adopt the State and Social Security budgets. And this, despite the risk of a motion of censure hanging over his government.

Prime Minister François Bayrou announced this Saturday in La Tribune Dimanche his decision to use Article 49 paragraph 3 of the Constitution to have the Assembly adopt the State and Social Security budgets.

The deputies must examine the conclusions of the Joint Committee on the State budget on Monday afternoon, an opportunity for a first 49.3. They will then move on to the examination of the second reading of the Social Security budget, theoretically until Friday, when there will be a second reading.

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“Move to adoption without delay”

“Now, we must move to adoption without delay. A country like ours cannot remain without a budget. The only way is to engage the government's responsibility. This will be done this Monday”, Mr. Bayrou asserts, hoping that “in ten days”, France will have “finally the budgets essential to the life of the nation”.

The Prime Minister's use of Article 49.3 is accompanied by a risk of censure, as La France Insoumise has announced the filing of motions of censure, which the communists and environmentalists are expected to vote on. The RN and the PS, however, have not yet made their intentions known. Attention is particularly focused on the socialists, with whom the government has been engaged in negotiations on the budget for several weeks.

A censure “would be angrily rejected by the French”

Asked about this risk, Mr. Bayrou states that its implementation “would be angrily rejected by the French”. “These two parties (the RN and the PS, editor's note) know this as well as I do”, he said, stressing that at the end of the joint committee, the PS had “welcomed the efforts made”. A little earlier, former socialist Prime Minister Lionel Jospin had urged PS deputies not to vote for a motion of censure, believing that it would lead “to an ungoverned country”.

The Prime Minister's announcement came the day after a Joint Committee adopted a version of the budget that reconciled the points of view of the representatives of the Assembly and the Senate. An agreement “historic”, welcomes Mr. Bayrou, because “it is the first time that political currents of different sensibilities agree to conclude together on a draft budget”.

Eight parliamentarians out of the fourteen present within the CMP voted for the text resulting from its work, all members of the government coalition.

The adoption of the budget will allow as planned to maintain the deficit at 5.4% of the GDP, confirms Mr. Bayrou.