Failure to keep all his promises in terms of institutional reforms, Emmanuel Macron could well bring to fruition those of ... François Hollande! According to our information, according to one of his close advisers, the head of state has recently started working on his teams to reduce the number of regional advisers, to the number of 1,757 to date.
When he almost halved the number of regions in mainland France (from 22 to 13) with his disputed territorial reform of 2014, his socialist predecessor undertook to reduce the number of elected officials by 15%, to bring them around 1,500. He quickly gave up under pressure from the big regions, including Ile-de-France, which did not intend to cut corners on its 209 elected representatives.
"More political stuff!" ", An opposition figure is annoyed in advance, quick to detect a maneuver there before the regional elections in 2021 against a Valérie Pécresse, a Xavier Bertrand or a Laurent Wauquiez.
Institutional reform will wait
In the absence of thrushes, we are content with blackbirds? The head of state's promise to reduce the number of members of parliament by 25% - from 577 to 433 deputies, in particular - has been sidelined for lack of agreement with the Senate. Last week, Macron had clarified to the LREM deputies and centrists received at the Elysée Palace that he intended to ask Gérard Larcher the "question of confidence" in an attempt to relaunch his reform of the institutions, in limbo since the Benalla affair in l summer 2018.
At this stage, the lines are still cut between the Elysée and the Palais du Luxembourg. And Macron has made it clear that he does not intend to waste the precious parliamentary time he has left until the presidential election for a stillborn project.
Result: unless a referendum, almost no one in the majority thinks that the reform of the institutions will see the light of day before 2022. “There is no point in shielding the legislative agenda. What is needed are reforms that concretely change the lives of the French. From this point of view, constitutional reform is blah, ”confesses a tenor LREM.
Too bad collateral, the presidential commitment to instill a dose of 20% proportional to the legislative, to ensure better representation of small political parties, also seems abandoned. It was, precisely, to elect 87 deputies on the proportional list system on the day of the first round of the legislative elections. It was one of the clauses of the agreement signed in 2017 between Emmanuel Macron and François Bayrou.
The proportional? "It looks cooked from home"
Where is the project at? "Flat encephalogram", we admit in high places at the Elysée. Translation: unless there is a miracle, the patient seems to be in clinical death. "The bill should be voted on before the summer and it is not on the agenda. It looks cooked from home, ”calculates a macronist source.
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Especially since it would then be necessary to proceed with a still painful redistribution of the constituencies, at the risk of making sacrifices among LREM deputies already turned against the executive power. In the midst of a parliamentary fight over pension reform, it is difficult to ask the troops to be hara-kiri.
By the legislative elections of 2022, “we will not have time to redistribute. Approximately 80 ridings should be removed, and now our members are all holding on to their seats. They are not going to scuttle, "buries a very close to the head of state. Nothing prevents, however, to initiate this reform by the end of the five-year term. "But if we do," completes a government source, it will be to apply it in the next mandate. "