After four months of tension and negotiations, the Assembly adopted the Social Security budget for 2025 on Wednesday, rejecting a new motion of censure, but the lower house remains fractured and threatened by paralysis.
Three 49.3 triggered by François Bayrou on this Social Security financing bill (PLFSS) earned him three LFI motions of censure on this text which cost Michel Barnier his job.
Unsurprisingly, in the absence of support from the PS and RN groups, the latter only received 121 votes, far from the 289 required, a result which led to the adoption of the PLFSS in the Assembly.
The text will now go to the Senate, on Thursday in committee and on Monday in the chamber, where the government hopes for a compliant adoption, to definitively close the budget page without going back before the deputies, after the adoption of the State budget last week.
"Here we are, perhaps, at the end of a marathon," François Bayrou rejoiced from the podium, whose government negotiated with the socialists to escape censorship.
"Pseudo-concessions weigh little against the austerity steamroller," criticized Insoumise Marianne Maximi in defense of the motion. "This PLFSS is not perfect for anyone," but "it is a matter of French credibility," replied the former Minister of Solidarity Paul Christophe (Horizons).
The general rapporteur Thibault Bazin (LR), hammered home to the government the "imperative" of controlling the social security deficit, estimated at more than 22 billion euros for 2025.
- " Lies " -
The pressure mounted on François Bayrou on Wednesday during Questions to the Government, with LFI MP Paul Vannier calling – in vain – on his colleagues to censure, in the face of the Prime Minister's "lies" about the violence at the Bétharram middle school and high school.
"In a peaceful adult democracy, you wouldn't be here, Mr. Prime Minister," said Benjamin Lucas, for the environmental group, shortly before the motion was rejected.
Having been put through the mill of censorship, and concessions granted to the opposition as well as to the majority, the Social Security budget provides for an increase in health insurance expenditure of 3.4%, compared to 2.6% initially planned, notably because the executive has extended the hospital envelope by one billion euros.
The government had to abandon an increase in co-payments (the patient's remaining cost after reimbursement by health insurance), agree to revise downwards the efforts required of companies concerning exemptions from social security contributions, and come to terms with the de-indexation of pensions on inflation.
The idea adopted in the Senate of introducing seven additional hours of unpaid work per year has also not been very popular.
– “Ticking time trap” –
In the majority, no more than in the opposition, the end of this long period of uncertainty should not give rise to excessive expressions of joy.
On the left, the episode deeply divided the New Popular Front, and left a bitter taste in the mouths of the socialists who renounced censorship, sometimes "with a heavy heart" in the face of a government engaged in a shift to the right, on the right of the soil or juvenile justice.
The PS group will file a motion of censure at the beginning of next week, against the "Trumpisation and Le Penisation of minds". An initiative that some socialist deputies are reluctant to support.
The Insoumis are calling for demonstrations throughout the country on March 22, a date which also corresponds to the international day against racism.
On the National Rally side, the executives are pleased to have obtained "victories" thanks to the censorship, while calling more than ever for a "change of leaders".
If Marine Le Pen's party gives the impression of not wanting to censor before a new dissolution is possible, from this summer, a change of tack is still possible.
In the government camp, some are pleased that the PS has returned to "responsibility".
But many fear entering a purgatory, with an Assembly still divided into three blocs, which would condemn it to paralysis. "Everyone has understood that this legislature would serve absolutely no purpose," grumbles a Macronist executive.
"Today, I don't see what structuring text we can put on the table," adds an LR MP, who is worried that reopening the debate on pensions could be a "time trap."
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