The deputies adopt a text in the "emergency" for the ceiling of the rise in rents

"I am fully aware that this text is being examined within restricted and unusual timeframes", acknowledged the Renaissance rapporteur Thomas Cazenave at the opening of the debates on Wednesday evening on his text, co-signed by the groups of the presidential camp (Renaissance, MoDem, Horizons) .

He proposes to renew until the beginning of 2024 the "rent shield": a cap on the increase in the reference index of rents at 3,5%. Introduced in the summer of 2022, it is due to end at the end of June 2023. A similar system caps the increase in the commercial rent index for SMEs.

As the end of the shield approached, in a context of high inflation, the extension proposal had to be registered urgently in order to hope to complete the parliamentary shuttle in time. The government has also initiated the accelerated procedure (one reading before each chamber).

MPs Liot, LR and RN denounced the limits of the text but voted for it. Adopted overnight by 259 votes to 93, after a tense session marked by interpellations and points of order, it will now go to the Senate.

Thomas Cazenave defended "the urgency" to extend this "shield" under penalty of seeing rents "soar by more than 6% from July". The left-wing deputies retorted that they had to be "frozen" and voted against the text.

"This shield illusion will necessarily lead to an increase," lamented Cyrielle Chatelain (ecologist). "This will be contained (but) any increase would create the risk of throwing even more people into poverty," she insisted.

“Tenants have already suffered a 3,5% increase (in 2022-2023) and will experience a new increase with your device (…) The only response to the height would be a freeze”, added the communist Stéphane Peu . "We are asking for a blank year," insisted William Martinet (LFI).

“It is impossible to freeze rents”, retorted Mr. Cazenave, advocating the “balance” between “tenants” and “owners also impacted by inflation”.

He also warned of censorship by the Constitutional Council in the event of a rent freeze or an overly broad extension of the shield. An argument rejected by the left, which argues that past rent freezes have not posed this problem.

“A strict extension (of the device) will not raise constitutional risks”, insisted the Minister Delegate for Trade Olivia Grégoire.

Inflation slowed in France in May to 5,1% over one year, according to an estimate published Wednesday by INSEE.