Its president calls for “a collective start”: the Senate takes control of the budget but uncertainty remains

Swept by the National Assembly, the budgetary texts are examined from Monday in the Senate, a chamber dominated by the right which intends to demonstrate "responsibility" in the face of sluggish finances, without knowing whether the executive will choose 49. 3 or the ordinances for its budget. From one room to another, waiting for an impossible compromise...

The budget marathon stops at the Palais du Luxembourg for several weeks. The draft Social Security budget for 2027 is debated from Monday until November 18. That of the State will then follow, from November 20 to December 9.

As the fall progressed, the equation remained insoluble for Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu, faced with an absence of a parliamentary majority, coupled with growing social distrust and a "French economy at a standstill", in the words of the Minister of the Economy Roland Lescure after the announcement of a falling GDP in the third quarter. The senators could, however, offer the executive a slight breath of fresh air: a solid alliance between the right and the centrists holds the majority in the upper house and it has become accustomed to adopting budgets in recent years, not without putting some markers on pensions, support for businesses or even the preservation of local communities. The President of the Senate, Gérard Larcher (Les Républicains) has called in recent days in Le Figaro for "a collective start" to "bring us back to a path of balance which makes us credible, not only vis-à-vis the markets but also vis-à-vis ourselves".

The government procrastinates In private, the tenor of the right does not hide his fears of "financial crisis" and wants the Senate to send "a message of responsibility" during the period. A way, too, of distinguishing itself from the National Assembly, where the State and Social Security budgets were in turn completely unraveled before being massively rejected at first reading. Many deputies expressed their weariness and the benches in the government camp sometimes seemed very empty.

The executive plays the patience card. Much less involved in the debates than last year, when he negotiated his survival with the socialists, Sébastien Lecornu is procrastinating, Matignon having made an appointment in "December" to search for a hypothetical compromise. Several paths are available to him: taking responsibility via article 49.

3, which exposes it to censorship, or, if the debates get bogged down, the route of ordinances, an unprecedented procedure which a priori prevents it from modifying its initial text to add, for example, measures of support for the high school movement. “Avoid ordinances” Despite the uncertainty, the Senate hopes to influence the final copy. “Our responsibility is to ensure that we can avoid orders” by obtaining “some gains” that can be integrated into the final copy via 49.

Machine-translated from French