The law organizes political life “when deputies become ministers, but not when ministers become deputies”, believes the ecologist deputy Léa Balage. Several on the left have been trying for several days to clarify the accumulation of functions caused by the resignation of the government by referring the matter to the Constitutional Council.
The ecologists filed a priority question of constitutionality (QPC) with the Council of State this Thursday, aiming to prove that the organic law that organizes the “incompatibility” between a mandate as deputy and ministerial functions, “contravenes the spirit of the Constitution”. The environmentalists filed this appeal after 17 resigning ministers from the Attal government were able to vote in the Assembly as deputies, but continue to manage current affairs and issue decrees.
While LFI and the PS have already filed appeals on the vote of the minister-deputies with the Constitutional Council, which declared itself incompetent, “we are trying to find another way” for it to decide, explained the ecologists deputy Léa Balage, who filed the appeal. If the Council of State finds this QPC admissible, it will forward it to the Constitutional Council.
Currently, the organic law of November 17, 1958 specifies the conditions for the “incompatibility” of functions. It explains that being a minister and a deputy is not incompatible if the government resigns “within one month after the start of the accumulation of the two functions”.
Green MP Léa Balage points out that Article 23 of the Constitution states that “the functions of a member of the government are incompatible with the exercise of any parliamentary mandate”. For her, this organic law “disregards the constitution”.
Furthermore, the Communist group in the Senate announced that it had tabled a constitutional bill that aims to limit the duration of a resigning government to 8 days and to prevent the accumulation of the functions of minister and MP. “It appears necessary to clarify the Constitution to avoid interpretations that jeopardize the very balance of our institutions”, the group emphasizes.
English (Canada) 
Français 