Faced with the outcry over the announcement of an advisory commission on the controversial article 24 of the proposed law on comprehensive security, Prime Minister Jean Castex had to backpedal on Friday, November 27, ensuring that the commission in question would not be responsible for rewriting the text.
The President of the Senate Gérard Larcher welcomes this and refers the government to simply "reading the Constitution" and to the role of the two parliamentary chambers.
You asked the government to give up asking the future consultative commission on the PPL global security to rewrite article 24. It renounces it.
Are you satisfied ?
GÉRARD LARCHER.
Yes, even if I continue to think that this committee which intervenes in parliamentary time has no interest.
Was this "bronca" necessary for the government to come to its senses and consider, I have been saying this for three weeks, that Parliament is not an adversary of the government?
I remind you that we have institutions: the executive, with a President of the Republic and a government, and Parliament.
Upstream, to advise, there is the Council of State and the Constitutional Council, downstream, to control.
If we want to think about economic, social or environmental subjects, there is also the Economic, Social and Environmental Council!
I am simply referring to reading the Constitution.
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How do you explain that the government does not have this reading of institutions?
I do not understand.
Dramatic events are happening right now and more than ever, we need to talk to each other.
To decide in a corner of a commission in the very ignorance of the constitutional functioning does not appear serious to me.
This Friday night back-pedaling contributes to the confusion of the debate.
The government is infected with the virus of the multiplication of commissions or committees.
It has created an emergency plan monitoring committee, a recovery plan monitoring committee, it proposes a recovery plan evaluation committee, a vaccination monitoring committee ... It is in Parliament, in the framework of a democratic and public debate, to draft or rewrite the legal texts.
The reality of the facts is that the “global security” PPL was sent to me late Tuesday afternoon after its vote in the National Assembly.
I seized the Law Commission and the work of the Senate began.
No one can withdraw this text, whether there is this advisory commission or not!
I will consider this possible work null and void.
The parliamentary shuttle is called bicameralism.
And we see that it is not useless!
What will the Senate Law Commission do?
I had an interview with François-Noël Buffet, its president.
No doubt the Law Commission, but it is up to it to work on it, will clarify the text of this article 24, but also other articles.
No doubt the senators will insert this new offense into the Penal Code, but without touching the law on the press.
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Is this a precedent?
I have no recollection in any case of the creation of an advisory commission on a bill between the National Assembly and the Senate.
Sometimes we have innovations ...
(laughs)
Did you talk to the Prime Minister about it?
I saw him on Thursday, but the idea of a commission had not yet arisen.
The country is living such a situation with the pandemic, with the economic crisis, with the tensions that we feel, that we need to listen to ourselves and talk to each other.
My role is simply to remind people of how the Constitution works.
As president of one of the two parliamentary chambers, I will never let anything happen.