Legislative: bulwark or point of balance? The Senate is preparing for the big upheaval

In the sumptuous decor of the Luxembourg Palace, parliamentary life has been slow since June 9: the dissolution also led to the postponement of almost all of the work of the upper house, a republican custom.

But the 348 senators, without fear for their mandate unlike the deputies - the Senate does not dissolve -, stand ready to resume their mission within a completely recomposed Parliament, with a probable historic progression from the National Rally to the National Assembly.

“Whatever scenario emerges on July 7, the Senate will have a major role: more than ever we will need this second chamber, this stabilizing pendulum of the institutions,” Gérard Larcher recently warned during a public meeting in Paris.

Head of a majority alliance of the right and the center in the High Assembly, the tenor of the Republicans has defended since 2017 a role of "counter-power" to Emmanuel Macron, notably with resounding control missions on the Benalla affair or the abusive use of consulting firms by ministries.

Constitutional lock

The Senate's room for maneuver is certainly limited: the government can give the final word to the National Assembly on its bills, after at least two successive readings in both chambers. But there is one major exception: the upper house cannot be bypassed for constitutional reforms.

The National Rally, which bases a large part of its program on a modification of the supreme text, on immigration in particular, could thus be slowed down in the event of coming to power, even with an absolute majority in the Palais Bourbon.

“We hold the constitutional lock and I can assure you that the locksmith has no desire to give the combination of this lock in the face of the madness of the extremes,” says Gérard Larcher, who opposes the RN and the La France insoumise, both almost absent in the upper house (the RN has three senators, LFI none).

“Stability, which has been the hallmark of the Senate, must be absolutely preserved in the period of great turbulence that awaits us,” also affirms the leader of the socialist senators Patrick Kanner to AFP, promising “a bicameralism which will work full throttle."

The left, which has around a hundred senators, intends to make itself heard, especially in the hypothesis of a majority of the RN which could extend to part of the Republican right.

“Build a rampart”

Because if the LR group in the Senate voted unanimously against an agreement with the RN, a small handful of its senators, questioned after the dissolution, were not fiercely opposed to the hypothesis of a government agreement with the party in power. flame.

Probably still too few to form a new group, even if "it will be the test of truth", recognizes Mr. Kanner.

In a letter to Gérard Larcher, the three presidents of the left-wing group showed on Tuesday their desire to see the Senate as "one of the strongest bulwarks against the decline of our rule of law".

“You will be one of those who will have erected a bulwark against the extreme right, or one of those who will have facilitated its access to power,” they told the President of the Senate, calling on him to “make a clear commitment to systematically obstruct a victory for the RN".

Proof of his importance, the powerful senator from Yvelines, very offensive towards Emmanuel Macron in recent days, was received by the president on Tuesday, a purely “institutional” and not “political” meeting, those around him assured.

As if to brush aside the hypothesis of a possible alliance in a potential “national unity government” after the second round? The name of Gérard Larcher had already come up insistently as a possible recourse to Matignon before the European elections, an option ultimately rejected by the person concerned, defender of an "independent" and "uncompromising" line for Les Républicains.