The Senate adopts the reform of public broadcasting through Article 44.3

A chaotic end to the Senate session. Faced with "obstruction" from the left on her public broadcasting reform, Culture Minister Rachida Dati unleashed the constitutional weapon of a "blocked vote" this Friday morning, July 11, to finish the bill before the parliamentary recess, which theoretically begins this evening. This allowed senators to vote on the bill in the afternoon, which was widely adopted by 194 votes in favor and 113 against.

A first victory for this text, which has had a chaotic path , pushed through by the minister in the face of hostility from the unions. This reform essentially plans to create a holding company, France Médias, on January 1, 2026, which would oversee France Télévisions, Radio France, and the INA (National Audiovisual Institute), under the authority of a chairman and CEO.

While its adoption seemed assured in advance , in a Senate with a right-wing majority, the examination of the text ultimately progressed only very slowly on Thursday. Repeated suspensions of the session, points of order, motions for preliminary rejection, invective galore... In more than eight hours of debate, the senators have barely begun the examination of the first article of the bill proposed by Senator Laurent Lafon. At the helm: the left, determined to play for time, while the extraordinary session is theoretically due to end today at midnight.

When the debate resumed on Friday morning, there was no sign that the discussions would speed up. A little over half an hour after the debates began, Rachida Dati announced that the government was asking the Senate "to decide by a single vote on the entire text," "in accordance with Article 44, paragraph 3 of the Constitution." This procedure, which is very rarely used, allows for the debates to be accelerated by organizing only a single vote, on the text and the amendments that the government chooses to retain.

"After more than seven hours of debate, we were only able to discuss 31 amendments to this text. We saw again this morning […] obstruction, more obstruction, and more obstruction," she justified. Around 300 amendments remained to be debated. The debates, suspended around 10:15 a.m., resumed nearly two hours later, and the session chair, Didier Mandelli (LR), acknowledged the government's request.

Left-wing speakers successively protested this "power grab," in the words of former Socialist minister Laurence Rossignol. "We're talking about freedom of the press. But let's start by respecting the rights of Parliament," she thundered, recalling that the Senate had other tools at its disposal to discipline discussions.

"You are responsible for the fact that the debate cannot take place. It is not us," retorted the text's rapporteur, Cédric Vial (LR). The president of the Culture Committee, Laurent Lafon (UDI), also defended the government's decision, pointing to a "characteristic" obstruction intended to "prevent the Senate from confirming its support" for the text. According to parliamentary sources, the decision to trigger the "blocked vote" had been on the table since Thursday.

But, while the President of the Senate and the Minister for Relations with Parliament were inclined to let the debate unfold, "it was indeed Rachida Dati," at the forefront of the left, who "at a given moment [...] decided for everyone," according to a heavyweight.

Furthermore, the debates were already "skimmed" during the first reading in the Assembly on June 30, following the surprise vote of a motion of rejection tabled by the environmentalists, in the face of the deserted benches of the government coalition. Thanks to its adoption in the Senate, it will therefore return to the Assembly in the fall, at an unspecified date.