🇫🇷Weekly Dispatch - Laws and Constitutions
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🇫🇷Weekly Dispatch - Laws and Constitutions
19 November 2023 - Joël Guerriau suspected of drugging an MP, President Macron shelves immigration referendum, Oudéa-Castéra admits financial error, and Elisabeth Borne works towards S&P rating bump
The Weekly Dispatch is your weekly update on major events in French and European politics, published on Sundays to give you the ideal summary of current affairs.
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This week
🔗Joël Guerriau suspected of drugging an MP
🙅Macron shelves Immigration Referendum
💸Oudéa-Castéra admits financial error
🏛️Borne working towards S&P rating bump
🔗Joël Guerriau suspected of drugging an MP
Sadly, we’re having to start the week with some awful news:
Senator Joël Guerriau (Horizons) has been charged and placed under judicial supervision for “administering to a person, without their knowledge, a substance likely to impair their discernment or control over their actions, in order to commit rape or sexual assault”, as well as “possession and use of substances classified as narcotics”.
The 66 year old senator from Loire-Atlantique, Joël Guerriau, was initially arrested on Wednesday 15 November after a complaint was made about him having potentially drugged MoDem MP Sandrine Josso, MP for the Loire-Atlantique's 7th constituency.
According to reports, Sandrine Josso has said that she “[felt] unwell after drinking a glass of champagne” and then saw Guerriau “grabbing a small plastic bag containing something white, in a drawer of his kitchen”. Understanding that something was wrong, she left his apartment and then filed a complain. She then tested positive for ecstasy, a sachet of which was found in Guerriau’s house.
Senator Guerriau has now been banned from going to the victim’s home and from coming into contact with victims and witnesses, according to the Paris Prosecutor’s office.
This will naturally send shockwaves within the Presidential Majority, with the Horizons party meeting on Saturday to discuss the accusations and the investigation. Christophe Béchu, the Minister of Ecologic transition, was particularly tough in his statement:
“He obviously cannot stay within the party if there is the slightest doubt about the veracity of all that … If the slightest of these elements is true, he will obviously have to draw the consequences. Justice must be as clear as possible”
As of this morning Senator Joël Guerriau has been suspended by Horizons, and if convicted of the above offence, he faces a possible five years in prison and a €75,000 fine.
🙅Macron shelves Immigration Referendum
Moving on to political events: the idea of a referendum on immigration has now been shelved due to lacking a “necessary majority” for the idea, following discussions in Saint-Denis between President Emmanuel Macron and French Party leaders.
At least, most of the party leaders were there, with Les Républicains (LR) opting to just not show up, whose lack of support may be one of the key reasons why this just simply didn’t work.
The crux of the discussion was around extending the scope of Article 11 of the French constitution, with the intent being to include social questions within the scope. This would require for both the Assemblée National and the Senate to adopt the same constitutional bill, and for this to then be approved by a three-fifths majority of congress.
For those interested in what Article 11 of the French constitution actually says, here you go:
We saw that the Presidential majority were in favour of this extension, with President of the National Assembly, Yaël Braun-Pivet (Renaissance), the secretary general of Renaissance, Stéphane Séjourné , and François Bayrou (MoDem) all in favour of broadening the scope.
They also had the support of Jordan Bardella, President of the Rassemblement National
Fabien Roussel, the national secretary of the Communist Party, said that many had clearly said that it was “complicated or dangerous” to go down this path, with François Bayrou, the president of MoDem, saying that avoiding it entirely would “save time” as the proposal had “little chance of prospering”.
However, there was some support for this proposal, it just came from the wrong party: the Rassemblement National, with Jordan Bardella having claimed to be “the only spokesperson for those who want to control immigration”.
Naturally not the best ally to have.
Meanwhile, the President of the Senate, Gérard Larcher (LR), the President of the Economic, Social and Environmental Council, Thierry Beaudet, former Prime Minister and potential presidential candidate, Edouard Philippe (Horizons), and the President of the Union of Democrats and Independents (UDI), Hervé Marseille, were all against the proposal.
The left were also broadly against the idea, and with a majority of the 11 participants (out of 14 invitees) being against the proposal, the French President had to admit that there was no guaranteed majority for any potential constitutional bill.
However a few interesting things happened, with Les Républicains taking a beating from their centre-right allies, the UDI, who decried the fact that LR President, Eric Ciotti, didn’t even turn up to defend one of his key demands.
Not only this, but failing to engage in these discussions effectively hands extra space to the far-right, with RN President Jordan Bardella being able to fill the vacuum and present his party as the key defender of a proposal coming from LR, and as a key representative of the right.
His absence was particularly noted alongside Manuel Bompard from La France Insoumise, and Olivier Faure from the Socialist Party, both of whom known for their aggressive stance against President and Government as part of the NUPES Coalition.
However, there is a benefit for the government to this proposal failing, with any referendum on a social issue being likely to devolve into a populist hell which would threaten to drown the government, squeezed between the far-right and far-left.
With the memory of the Gillets Jaunes present in the minds of many actors,
💸Oudéa-Castéra admits financial error
Meanwhile, this week saw the Minister of Sports, Amélie Oudéa-Castéra, admitting that she may have made a mistake in justifying her generous salary from when she was the director general of the French Tennis Federation (FFT).
Having argued on Thursday that it was justifiable due to the strong economic situation of the Federation,and because it hadn’t received “one euro of public subsidy”, she was forced to correct this factual error on Friday to avoid perjuring herself.
In a letter sent to the president of the comission of inquiry, Béatrice Bellamy (Horizons) and the rapporteur, Sabrina Sebaihi (EELV), she noted that the FFT “received subsidies from the National Sports Agency (ANS)” amounting to €1,280,600 in 2022 (of 0.2% of the total budget of the FFT).
Amélie Oudéa-Castéra did make a point of pointing out that the FFT received the lowest subsidy rate from the ANS, which on average funds 21% of the budgets of olympic and paralympic federations.
She also made a point of defending his position, stating that the FFT “is able to pay those of its managers at this level subject to precise, substantiated, controlled performance indicators”. She argued this is due to the FFT’s “business model” and the fact that the Roland-Garros tournament is a financial success.
“There is no taxpayer money behind [my] remuneration … In the functions that are mine today, here again, I divide my remuneration by x … If I compare my current remuneration to the volume of hours that I put in each week working days, nights, weekends, I am not well paid. It doesn't matter, I have a fundamental mission at an important moment for the country.”
🏛️Borne working towards S&P rating bump
Let’s finish up with some financial news, with Standard & Poors rating revision being expected in December of this year, following the negative outlook on the French debt back in June 2023.
Having warned of risks relating to the Borne government’s budgetary objectives, the Prime Minister currently finds herself having to ensure that the French debt is being well managed while dealing with the contentious 2024 finance bill.
With the goal being to meet the public deficit target of 3.7% in two years, she brought together twenty minister at Matignon in order to launch her public spending review, with €12 billion in savings being necessary from 2024 onwards.
This is based on a campaign promise from Emmanuel Macron’s last campaign: to work towards getting below a 3% deficit and to reduce public debt by 2027.
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