the Senate approves the “revenue” part after the boycott of the vote by the left

The three left-wing groups (socialist, environmentalist, communist) decided to show their “anger” by deserting the hemicycle after the government's request to re-examine measures already voted on.

Stormy Sunday session in the upper house: the Senate approved, Sunday December 1, the “revenue” part of the state budget for 2025 after a boycott of the vote by the left. After seven days and six nights of debate at the Luxembourg Palace, the senators, who support the government, voted 200 votes to 15 for the first part, dedicated to the country's revenues. But the session was disrupted by numerous incidents, the three left-wing groups (socialist, environmentalist, communist), in the minority, having decided to demonstrate their “anger” by deserting the hemicycle and boycotting the last hours of debate and the vote.

At the dawn of a high-risk week for the government, which is gambling its survival in front of the deputies on another budgetary text – the Social Security budget -, the political turmoil has thus reached the High Assembly with a bang, ordinary, much calmer and more subdued than the National Assembly.

The elected representatives of the left castigated the choice of the government and the senatorial majority – a right-centrist alliance -, who requested at the last minute the holding of a second deliberation on several dozen measures nevertheless voted during the week by show of hands . Most often, these were taxes or measures voted against the advice of the Finance Committee and the Minister of Public Accounts Laurent Saint-Martin, sometimes with alternative alliances between the left and the centrists.

“This minority government has chosen to instead turn to its right and its extreme right by refuting all the arguments of the left”criticized the communist Pascal Savoldelli, the ecologist Thomas Dossus denouncing him a “additional force”. “We have just invented a new tool: senatorial 49.3. We spend hours, day and night, voting on measures, finding compromises. And with the wave of the hand, the deliberations are swept away,” denounced socialist Thierry Cozic to AFP.