AFP is reporting that a package of constitutional reforms has passed in France, by the slimmest of margins.
Details are sketchy in the AFP news item, so I am hoping a reader might have some more information.
Some of what AFP says:
VERSAILLES, France (AFP) — French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s flagship constitutional reform was passed Monday at a special congress of deputies and senators…
Of 906 eligible lawmakers, 905 voted with 896 counted after abstentions and spoilt papers. 539 voted for the project, 357 against. Under constitutional rules, Sarkozy needed three-fifths, or 538, to reach the winning post.
He did so thanks to Socialist Jack Lang, a former minister who sat on the committee that laid the groundwork for the bill, and parliament speaker Bernard Accoyer, who broke with convention by casting his vote…
The bill sets a two-term limit for presidents, gives parliament a veto over some presidential appointments, ends government control over parliament’s committee system and allows parliament to set its own agenda.
But the clause that dominated public debate is one letting the president address parliament once a year in a US-style state of the union speech, which the French head of state has been barred from doing since 1875 to ensure the executive and legislative are kept separate.
Sarkozy has argued that his reform of the constitution brought in by president Charles de Gaulle in 1958 would make the head of state more accountable to lawmakers and to the public.
As I said, that’s sketchy on the key details.
538? Hmmm. Tres symbolique.
L’Etat de l’Union speeches? In France? I see the ideas of Jean du Chaine have flowed from l’Arizone to the arrondissements.
For some discussion (including my comments) chez the Voloh Conspiracy pro and con the idea of the US Congress adopting Question Time, see http://tinyurl.com/5zpm22.
It might have had symbolic value for Third Republic France to ban a ceremonial, party-neutral, parliament-appointed President from directly addressing the legislature: to preserve his/her neutrality, to avoid Bonapartism. There are analogies in other systems – eg, the UK’s ban on the Monarch setting foot in the Commons; Ireland’s ban on the President addressing the nation without the Cabinet’s consent. And in 1875, the real executive chief – the Prime Minister – still sat in the Assembly, with other Ministers, and so could speak and be questioned.
But to retain this rule in 2008, when the President is de facto executive leader and the Prime Minister more like (in US terms) the Vice President plus the White House Chief of Staff – and when neither sits in Parliament, nor does any Minister – and when (elective) Bonpartism has been entrenched since 1965 – the rule seems to have become a positive nuisance.
Seed planted by Tom Round — 22 July 2008 @ 07:07
AFP also reports that M Hollande, the (current) Socialist leader, is darkly threatening retribution against M Jack Lang for voting contrary to the rest of his “political family”. (Expulsion of M Lang would, for this Australian reader, and I’ve no doubt Alan will concur, be all too ironic). Doesn’t the French Constitution have a “no imperative mandates” clause? I know de Gaulle invoked it to refuse convening the Assembly in the 1960s, on the ground that the Deputies petitioning for a special session were acting under such an unconstitutional mandate, but would the clause prohibit threats of unspecified retribution against MPs for voting their own line? Or would a specified threat of disendorsement and expulsion by the party be considered constitutionally privileged?
Seed planted by Tom Round — 22 July 2008 @ 07:52
The Prime Minister must have the confidence of the Parliament in order to govern, even if officially he is appointed by the President. So there is an element of parliamentary accountability already involved even if it is attenuated.
It should be noted that the President will have to right to address the Congress (a joint sitting fo the two houses) at Versailles (and not in the Palais Bourbon or Palais du Luxembourg, home of the Chamber and Senate respectively). So he won’t be permitted on the parliamentarians’ turf as such-but the opposition will not have the right to either ask question or respond in the context of the Congress either.
The opposition case is that permitting the President to address, in effect to give public direction to the Assembly, would have the effect of Presidentialising the system in a way they feel is potentially undemocratic (I think they are overdoing it a bit on that, but anyway).
More to the point they had also sought and failed to extract concessions from the government on reform of the elections to the Senate, a wildly unrepresentative body dominated by the Right since time immemorial, and on counting the President’s public pronouncements in the time allotted to the parties in the media (in effect, if the President made public statements in the media about an issue, the opposition parties would be granted an equal right of reply).
The anger against Lang is undoubtedly due to the fact that a two vote victory is still a victory, and any prospect of extracting such concessions from the government has now gone up in smoke.
I would presume the threats of retribution against Lang would involve having an official Socialist candidate standing against him in Pas-de-Calais at the next legislative election-if he doesn’t find himself in a Sarkozy government in a few months time, of course.
Seed planted by Dermot — 22 July 2008 @ 09:11
On members of the government not having parliamentary seats: they can however take part in debates in both chambers, and are expected to answer questions as in any parliamentary system.
Seed planted by Espen Bjerke — 22 July 2008 @ 12:44
Thanks, Espen, noted – although (as The New Republic has complained in the US context) for legislators to be able to question Cabinet officials, but not the President, is “playing Hamlet without the Prince”.
As for “presidentialising” the system, surely the switch to five years for President, as well as the experience of cohabitation, seems to implicitly recognise that that particular cheveau, c’est boulté deja?
Is it intended to actually specify in the Constitution that the Presidential addresses must take place at Versailles? Isn’t that a bit prescriptive for a nation that in living memory had governments operating from Vichy and London instead of Paris?
Seed planted by Tom Round — 22 July 2008 @ 16:52
The Congress, the joint meeting of the two Chambers, is always held at Versailles. A question of spac, perhaps. They could hold it in Stade de France, I suppose!
As for presidentialisation, that is of course the suspicion of the opposition. This is not so popular, even on the Right. But it would certainly be Sarkozy’s kind of thing, if it were politically possible-he isn’t nicknamed “omni-president” for nothing. Early proposals would have had the President “directing” the government in a way that he does not formally do now-that normally being the PMs job.
Seed planted by Dermot — 23 July 2008 @ 11:29
On ‘presidentialization’ and executive accountability, neither is changing. Robert Elgie confirms, at his blog, that the reforms do not alter the semi-presidential nature of the constitution.
The cabinet remains accountable exclusively to the parliamentary majority. The revisions thus entails no less ‘presidentialization’ nor less accountability of the president than the current framework.
As for a separately elected and fixed-term president addressing the legislature, it is an annual tradition for me to give my assessment of that.
Seed planted by MSS — 23 July 2008 @ 11:44
Lang was the only socialist in either the Assembly or the Senate to vote against, though a handful of ‘other left’ parliamentarians from the Senate voted for the reform. Actually, seven UMP deputies voted against or abstained, plus one or two more senators. So, party discipline was slightly weaker on the right. Perhaps Lang didn’t expect that level of defection on the right and thought that his vote wouldn’t be so decisive. Plus, last week, he announced in Le Monde that he was voting in favour of the reforms. In retrospect, though, a U-turn might not have been as embarrassing as the current situation. In fairness, Lang was a member of the working group that drafted the reform proposals a while back. Even though some of those proposals weren’t adopted, quite a few were. Therefore, he probably had more of a stake in the reform process than most other socialists, though as a seasoned politician he could have got himself off that hook if he had really wanted to.
Seed planted by Robert Elgie — 24 July 2008 @ 06:11
Perhaps the ‘other left’ senators that voted for the reform are actually from the Radical Party, an associated component of the UMP that still mainly sits in the RDSE* group in the Senate. This group houses traditional radicals (liberals) from both right and left, as well as a few centre-left overseas movements and a few right-wingers. It routinely splits its votes.
Until the creation of the broadly-based UMP group in 2002, the Senate consisted of groups somewhat more reminiscent of the fourth republic than the fifth – historically-ideologically more pure divisions that in the National Assembly had been completely contorted due to the electoral system in combination with parliamentary government (radicals, Christian democrats and other centrists would there split and merge according to successive electoral/governmental alliances).
OK – I then checked the tally, and it appears that both the right and (most of) the left radicals supported the reform. The latter thus broke with their Socialist allies with whom they sit in the National Assembly.
* RDSE = Rassemblement démocratique et social européen
Seed planted by Espen Bjerke — 24 July 2008 @ 11:09
Espen’s correct about the PRG. Le Canard Espen is correct about the PRG. The well-informed satirical journal Le Canard Enchaine suggests that the PRG leader has ambitions to reunite the sundered Radical movement-the left of the Radicals seperated from the “official” party inthe 1970s when they signed an electoral pact with Mitterands Socialists and the Communist Party.
The RDSE group mentioned above is a flag of convenience for Senators from both wings. The right wing faction, the National Radicals, known as Valoisiens, are federated with the UMP. A union of the two factions for the forthcoming European Parliament elections would potentially weaken both the Socialists and the dissident centre-right Modem.
The same newspaper claimed Sarkozy was confidently predicting a double digit majority up to a few days before the vote, so the reinforcements from the Left were decisive in the end. A very close run thing!
Seed planted by Dermot — 25 July 2008 @ 15:32
Le Canard Espen. I write like; quack like; so must be!
That is very interesting about the PRG, Dermot. Are there any prospects that the Valoisiens, who have had a bit of a renaissance under the UMP umbrella*, would actually break out of that party even for the European elections only? I do not follow French politics very closely, but I doubt for instance that the party president, Jean-Louis Borloo, would risk his senior position in the government by doing anything that was not with the understanding of Sarkozy. On their side, the alliance with the Socialists has been good for the PRG, at least in ensuring their survival as a political force (however dependent).
It seems as though both of these radical strands, while real groupings (the PRG especially so, since it has a few strong areas in the South), are mainly being propped up by each electoral bloc so that these can strengthen their social liberal or traditionalist republican credentials. One might wonder whether, in an effort to further undercut the MoDem, both may now be sent out as kamikazes.
* Around 20 Parti radical deputies elected in 2007 – these sit as full members of the UMP group and, as I understand it, are as much members of that party as are the rest. However, for some, the additional radical label is surely another of those flags of convenience.
Seed planted by Espen Bjerke — 25 July 2008 @ 21:53
Espen,
The key thing about the European elections in France is that they are run under list PR on a regional basis. I think there is a threshold of 5% with highest remainder.
The Radicals tend to be used as catspaws by the bigger parties-a Radical list headed by a controversial businessman, Bernard Tapie, was covertly supported by the Mitterand faction of the Socialist Party against its own official list, led by Mitterand’s party rival, then PM Michel Rocard. It outdistanced the PS list and led to the fall of Rocard’s government, basically destroying him as a serious Presidential contender.
Otherwise the micro-parties like the two Radicals are bound up with the majorvleft-right blocs, due to the Two-Round system for national elections. The Valoisiens have some strength in the east of France. They have supplied the Mayor of Nancy since time immemorial. They also won a bastion of the left in one of the few right-wing successes in the last local elections, not far from me here in Longwy, due to a split in the left vote.
Seed planted by Dermot — 28 July 2008 @ 18:27