Senate wants to better supervise government’s recourse to orders

Senators adopted, Thursday, almost unanimously, a proposal for a law to combat the too common use of this procedure which allows the executive to take measures normally under the law.

by and

An more chapter in the long confrontation between the Senate and the executive. If the bill of health vigilance did not find thanks to the eyes of senators, who rejected him at second reading, Thursday, November 4, another text concentrated the attention of the second bedroom. A Proposal for constitutional law To better supervise the recourse to the executive orders was adopted at the near-unanimity of senators (by 322 votes to 22, with the exception of the Macronian group Gathering, progressive and independent democrats). This procedure, often decried by the parliamentarians, allows the Government, pursuant to Article 38 of the Constitution, to take measures which usually fall under the field of the law, after obtaining the agreement of the Parliament by a law of Habilitation.

Carried by the Socialist Senator of Loiret Jean-Pierre Sueur, this text is partly motivated by the recent turnaround in the case law of the Constitutional Council. Two decisions of 28 May and July 3, 2020, now allow legislative value to non-ratified orders by Parliament, and this beyond the period of ratification included in the Enabling Law. Although this bill has very little chance of suggesting, senators want to reaffirm the principle that, without ratification by Parliament, an order can only have a regulatory value.

318 Ordinances since the Beginning of the five-year

According to Jean-Pierre Sueur, this case law “is simply astounding because since 2008, the Constitution stipulates that the ratification of orders must be before Parliament according to the express procedure”. “These two decisions grant a real legislative power to the executive that inevitably leads to the considerable collapse of the role of Parliament,” said Stéphane the Rudulier, Senator of the Republicans (LR) Bouches-du-Rhône , in session. “For Parliament, this case law does not change anything,” defended the custody of the seals, Eric Dupont-Moretti, judging the excessive approach.

The elected representatives also draw up a severe statement on the exponential recourse to the orders by the successive governments of the last fifteen years and which, according to them, has aggravated during the Fifteennial of Emmanuel Macron. According to the Report Senator LR de la Manche, Philippe Bas, the number of orders has been an average of 64 per year since 2017, for a total of 318, end of September 2021. Only 21% of orders published during the five-year period were ratified by Parliament against 62% for the Quinquennium of Nicolas Sarkozy and 30% for François Hollande.

You have 60.88% of this article to read. The rest is reserved for subscribers.

/Media reports.