Prime Minister Gabriel Attal said Thursday that he was “totally open” to a new format for questions to the government, where deputies would address only him, a formula never before tried in France.
“My nature is to respond when someone calls me.
I am not the type to hide behind my ministers,” assured the head of government on the sidelines of a meeting with farmers in Janvilliers, in Marne.
If the President of the National Assembly “wishes, I am totally ready to stand in front of the deputies every week, to answer all the questions that would be asked,” he added.
Unpublished in France
Yaël Braun-Pivet had already submitted to his predecessor Élisabeth Borne the idea that one of the two weekly question sessions to the government, that of Wednesday, be devoted to responses from the Prime Minister alone.
Traditional in the United Kingdom, such a format would be completely new in France.
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Currently, MPs from all political groups question ministers every week during “questions to government” sessions on current issues.
It is customary for the Prime Minister to respond only to the heads of parliamentary groups and to let his ministers respond to other MPs.
Two sessions per week
Last November, the National Assembly decided to experiment for 10 weeks with a return to two sessions per week, one of 1 hour 15 minutes on Tuesday and one of 45 minutes on Wednesday, to try to revitalize this ritual meeting.
“In view of the results established”, Yaël Braun-Pivet indicated on Wednesday that this organization would continue until the end of the ordinary session, at the end of June.
“This extension should also allow us to improve the quality of these sessions,” she said in a letter addressed to her colleagues at the Palais-Bourbon.
The Yvelines MP considers in particular “essential” the presence of the Prime Minister and all of his ministers at both sessions.
She also calls for “significant participation from deputies”.