The Senate, dominated by the right-wing opposition, rejected on the night of Thursday, December 1, the draft 2023 budget for agriculture and forestry, considered not to be up to par.
The credits planned by the government for the “agriculture, food, forestry and rural affairs” mission were rejected by 238 votes against and 55 for, after four hours of discussions.
Senators LR, in the majority in the upper house, criticized the executive in particular for putting 560 million euros on the table for the reform of crop insurance, which must come into force on January 1, against 680 million euros expected.
"For this necessary reform, it is feared that public support is insufficient
," summarized the special rapporteur of the finance committee, Patrice Joly.
“We can have doubts about the sufficiency of the credits which are dedicated to the forest”
, also advanced the senator from Nièvre.
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The unions of the National Forestry Office (ONF) hoped that elected officials would vote for amendments allowing the public establishment to recruit.
The workforce has shrunk since 2000, from 12,800 to nearly 8,000 people today.
This
"would mark a change in the deleterious policy of recent years and would call into question the State-ONF contract of objectives, which still provides for job cuts until 2025"
, declared to AFP before the session Patrice Martin, secretary General of the Snupfen-Solidaires.
The government assured that the workforce would not drop in 2023, the Minister of Agriculture Marc Fesneau evoking in the Senate an
“awareness of the need to stop the bleeding”
.
"We don't have time to debate"
Finally, the parliamentarians withdrew all their amendments at the end of the session, to move quickly to the vote and avoid continuing the debates on Saturday.
“Don't think that because we won't vote on mission appropriations, we won't be on your side.
(...) We are in a hurry for the general budgetary discussion
,” said the president of the Economic Affairs Committee, Sophie Primas, to the attention of the ONF agents who attended the debates.
Several amendments also concerned the reassessment of the budgets of government canteens, schools and hospitals, as well as support for organic farming, faced with consumer disaffection.
“We don't have time to debate, we don't even have time to vote on our amendments
,” lamented Senator Fabien Gay (CRCE with a communist majority).