While the National Assembly debates the 2025 budget, Éric Woerth has his idea for the timing for 49.3. Will Michel Barnier draw this constitutional weapon to pass his text? “The sooner the better,” said the former budget minister on Wednesday, when the government raised the issue in the Council of Ministers.
“I do not have the same opinion as some of my colleagues, I think that the sooner the better”, assumed the Macronist deputy for Oise before the Association of Parliamentary Journalists (AJP) .
The government already disowned in the hemicycle
The government’s initial copy provides for 60 billion in savings, theoretically divided between 20 billion in new revenue and 40 billion in reductions in spending. But “it was distorted in committee (and) will be distorted” by the National Assembly in the hemicycle ultimately estimated Éric Woerth.
Currently being studied in the hemicycle, the bill has already undergone a first significant rewrite compared to the initial copy on Tuesday evening, the deputies deciding against the advice of the government to perpetuate an exceptional contribution on high incomes.
Éric Woerth expects that the text will still be largely rewritten by opposition coalitions. “We might be led to vote against our own text. We’ve already done it once in committee, we can always do it again, but ultimately, have we saved time? I’m not sure. France doesn’t have time,” he argued, pleading for the government to use 49.3. This would allow him to pass the text without a vote, unless a motion of censure is adopted, but also to choose the amendments he retains.
“Learn to dare again”
“This draft budget is not a structuring project, it is a response to our nagging public finance problem. It is a response adapted in volume and which roughly makes a distribution of the effort between revenue and expenditure more or less acceptable,” explained Éric Woerth, former president of the Finance Committee. “So, let’s go.” Why remain exposed to what divides us so much? “, he called. And according to him, “if some want to censor the government, then let them censor it. I think we really need to relearn how to dare.”
