"
We thought that Jupiter was over...
" It is with these words that the socialist senator and head of the Socialist, Ecologist and Republican group in the Senate (SER) calls on Thursday for Emmanuel Macron to come confront parliamentarians.
“
It would be useful for him to speak before Congress
”, judges the former minister of François Hollande, for whom “
the president has not taken the measure of the situation
”, that is to say a parliament lacking an absolute majority.
Since the constitutional reform of 2008, the President of the Republic can indeed take the decision to bring together the two chambers of Parliament in Versailles, to make a declaration there.
Article 18 of the Constitution specifies that “
his declaration may give rise, without his presence, to a debate which is not the subject of any vote
”.
The 577 deputies and 348 senators are required to participate.
Two appeals to Congress since 2017
This constitutional provision is the only one allowing the President of the Republic to face all parliamentarians, because he is not authorized to go to Parliament.
Since 1873, a republican tradition established by Adolphe Tiers establishes the fact that the Head of State cannot physically present himself in the two hemicycles.
This in a logic of respect for the separation of executive and legislative powers.
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Article 18 also provides for the possibility for the President of the Republic to communicate “
with the two Assemblies of Parliament by means of messages which he has read and which do not give rise to any debate
”.
On February 25, the Presidents of the National Assembly, Richard Ferrand (LREM), and of the Senate, Gérard Larcher (LR), therefore read simultaneously in both chambers the message of the Head of State relating to the war in Ukraine. .
Since 1958, the Congress has met twenty times.
Sixteen times for the vote on a revision of the Constitution, and four times on the occasion of a declaration by the President of the Republic.
During his first term, Emmanuel Macron spoke twice before Congress.
At the start of his presidential term, July 3, 2017, and to deliver a general policy speech, July 9, 2018.