after a peak in texts published in the “Official Journal” in July, a drop in activity in August

Since Emmanuel Macron accepted the resignation of Gabriel Attal’s government on July 16, ministers have been confined to managing current affairs. They are supposed to ensure “daily life”, the continuity of the State or urgent situations, without taking political measures.

Nearly two months after the second round of legislative elections, while the President of the Republic has still not appointed a Prime Minister, some of his political opponents are denouncing “an abuse of power” : “When we look at this resigning government, it looks more and more like a fully functioning government.deplores MP Mathilde Panot, president of the La France Insoumise group in the National Assembly, on Franceinfo on August 30. Since July 16, there have been more than 1,300 decrees published in Official Journal. »

A peak in post-legislative activity

The Official Journal of the French Republic publishes every day official texts related to the activity of the State – treaties, ordinances, laws, regulatory texts, declarations, legal publications, etc. It appears in paper and digital format.

In these publications made available by the Directorate of Legal and Administrative Information (DILA), we have attempted to understand what falls within the scope of government activity, by selecting, from among all the decrees, orders and circulars, the categories “general texts” et “nominative measures”in order to exclude the acts of independent administrative authorities or the decisions of the Council of State.

This quantitative analysis shows a significant increase between June 30, the date of the first round of the 2024 legislative elections, and the resignation of the government. The peak observed is unparalleled since the period following the election of Emmanuel Macron in 2017.

It then decreases, even if it remains higher than the usual number of texts published in previous years, until around July 20. Since the beginning of August, the government’s activity reflected in the Official Journal is below its level of previous years.

Among these “surplus” texts published at the beginning of the summer, it is difficult to know by this quantitative bias which ones would possibly go beyond the framework of the current affairs of a resigning government.

A significant portion of the texts published since July are linked to the functioning of the “machinery of the State”: delegations of signature, admissions to retirement of civil servants, orders establishing the list of persons authorized to practice the profession of doctor, promotion to the labor inspectorate, etc. Some are linked to “urgent” situations, such as the temporary creation of a prohibited zone in the Marseille region. “for reasons of public safety, on the occasion of the Olympic Games” (Official Journal (July 19).

But the political coloring of some of the texts published in Official Journal arouses intense criticism in the opposition. On July 24, the first secretary of the Socialist Party, Olivier Faure, alerted the vice-president of the Council of State, Didier-Roland Tabuteau, of a “recent series of appointments to senior positions within the central administration with deferred start dates.”