A year after the second round of the legislative elections, which notably led to the loss of the absolute majority for the presidential camp, the political scientist and researcher at the Center for European Studies and Comparative Politics of Sciences Po, Olivier Rozenberg, draws the first lessons of this extraordinary legislature.
The first year of this legislature was marked by very stormy sessions and an increase in the sanctions imposed on deputies. What is this symptom?
For a year, ninety-five sanctions have been imposed by the President of the National embly, Yaël Braun-Pivet, or the office of the institution. Among these sanctions, sixty-eight were against deputies of the New People’s Ecological and Social Union [Nupes], mainly from La France insoumise (LFI), after having held up signs in the Hemicycle on March 16 at the time of recourse to article 49 paragraph 3 by the Prime Minister, Elisabeth Borne, on the pension reform. By way of comparison, there were fifteen sanctions imposed between 2017 and 2022 and twenty-three between 1958 and 2017.
We are therefore witnessing a veritable explosion of sanctions. It results, in part, from the increase in verbal tensions which is due both to the record number of elected representatives from the extremes and the refusal of some to play the codified club game of the parliamentary institution. Some LFI deputies in particular are in an umed populist strategy. This was illustrated with the “rebellious” deputy Thomas Portes and his tweet where he wears the face of Olivier Dussopt [le ministre du travail] on a ball. When the presidency asked him to apologize in session, he replied: “I will not lie down in front of the bourgeoisie. » On this account, the penalty is almost a medal.
The president of the LFI group in the National embly, Mathilde Panot, speaks during the debates on the bill to repeal the postponement of the legal retirement age, June 8, 2023. JULIEN MUGUET FOR “THE WORLD”
Second explanation, the relative majority and the suspense on the outcome of many votes that results from it, including one of the censure motions, cause tension. As the majority is tight, the government and its deputies are using all the procedural weapons at their disposal to circumvent opposition. However, the tools are not lacking under the Ve Republic and each use causes dissatisfaction, not because they surprise, but because they update the procedural inferiority of the parliamentary institution.
But isn’t this verbal tension in the Hemicycle consubstantial with the embly where there have always been outbursts?
Specialists tend to relativize the violence of parliamentary exchanges by saying that it was even more palpable under the IIIe or the IVe Republic. In fact, the debate is skewed in advance because the notion of tension or the terms of insults change over time. So we can only make a comparison over short periods. And on this, there is no doubt that there are many more tensions than twenty years ago when almost everyone agreed on the rules within the institution.
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