After four days of frequently violent verbal clashes, the French National Assembly on Wednesday morning finally passed the budgetary adjustments needed to finance measures aimed at boosting spending power.
The adjustments to the 2022 budget were supported by 293 deputies, rejected by 146, with 17 abstentions.
The right-wing Republican parliamentary group supported the government. The MPs from the far-right National Rally, however, boycotted the vote, leaving the parliament en masse in protest at the rejection of a demand to boost retirement pensions by 500 million euros.
This second debate on spending power followed last Friday's agreement by the French parliament to allocate an additional 20 billion euros in emergency funding to help the less-well-off in the face of inflation.
In total, budget adjustments of 44 billion euros were agreed by the MPs, including 9.7 billion which will be used by the government to buy out the remaining privately owned shares in the national electriciuty company, EDF.
The rest of the money will be used to support the cap on energy prices. The subvention of 30 centimes per litre on motor fuel has been extended until the end of October. There's to be a wage boost for civil servants. And the TV licence fee has been abolished, meaning that the 138 euros paid by 23 million French households must be found elsewhere.
A left-wing proposal to impose a tax on the "excess" profits of major industrial groups was narrowly rejected.
Cash concessions to political opponents
Le Monde says the government got its measures passed "with difficulty," following a parliamentary session described as "explosive".
The presidential faction and its allies profitted from the support of the 54 deputies of the Republican right, which is anxious to position itself as a "constructive opposition". But that support comes at a price.
According to Le Monde's calculations, the bill passed on Tuesday night includes at least 350 million euros to finance opposition proposals.
The political costs are more difficult to estimate.
The parliamentary landscape is now clear, according to several left-wing critics. The so-called centrist government has formed an ad hoc alliance with the mainstream right.
Says Socialist MP Christine Pirès Beaune, "we now have the left against the conservatives and liberals," a classic parliamentary set up..
"This is a disgrace. You should be ashamed!" yelled communist MP André Chassaigne as he confronted the finance minister on the government refusal to boost pensions.
"You won't last five years like this," Eric Coquerel of the far-left France Unbowed group warned the presidential party. "You no longer have an absolute majority."
"But we still have a majority," Bruno Le Maire reminded him, to the boos of the opposition and applause from the government benches.
The effectiveness of that majority will have to be reconfirmed, probably with concessions, before every major vote.
Night of parliamentary psychodrama
Right wing Le Figaro writes of a "night of psychodrama" in the French parliament, noting that the finance minister was obliged to remind the assembly that "democracy is not anarchy", and that the Tuesday session was several times interrupted to allow the reestablishment of order.
At one stage Bruno Le Maire called on his government colleagues to "resist populist rant, to refuse calls for free or easy money, financed by leaving the country with a future mountain of debt."
Finally, according to the analysts at business paper Les Echos, the government got the bulk of its measures through. They paid more than they might have wished, but they have managed to defend a political red line.
How long they can continue to do that remains to be seen.
The budget rectification legislation will now be submitted to the French senate.
