Senate President Gerard Larcher was comfortably re-elected on Monday at the head of the House of Councilors for a fifth three-year term in the position, a formality for this right-wing trend, which is supported by the center and admired abroad.
The Senator from Yvelines received 218 votes out of 320 votes, compared to 64 for the socialist Patrick Kanner, 20 for the communist Cécile Cukierman, and 18 for the environmentalist Guillaume Gontard, on the first day of the parliamentary session.
Eight days after the Senate elections that kept the right in power in the Senate, the 74-year-old senator returns to “The Plateau,” the headquarters of the President of the Supreme Council, which he occupied from 2008 to 2011 and since 2014.
“The Senate is more than ever at the heart of democratic life,” he declared to the chamber as soon as he was elected, at the dawn of lively debates this fall on immigration or the budget. Facing a “deep crisis,” the Senate President called for “a break with this downward spiral,” calling on his colleagues to “legislate better and legislate less.”
With the praise of his political family (the Republicans), Gérard Larchet was able to count on the support of the Center Union, another pillar of the majority in the Senate, in a secret ballot but without surprise.
Other minority groups, such as the RDSE (mainly extremists), the Macronist group (RDPI) or the group of independents, with a sensitivity close to Edouard Philippe’s Afek party, have not proposed a candidate against Mr. Larchet.
Even if the right witnessed a slight erosion during the Senate elections on September 24, with dozens of seats lost according to the latest estimates, the reappointment of Gérard Larchet was not in doubt.
“He embodies our institution. With him we were able to raise the image of the Senate” in the face of the “hysterical” National Assembly, Senate President LR Bruno Retilio told France 2 on Monday.
– The bicycle was remodeled Tuesday –
The head of the centrist group, Hervé Marseille, said in an interview with Agence France-Presse: “He is a president whom we appreciate and who ensures the balance of the majority in the Senate with its diversity.”
The absence of a majority from the presidential camp in the National Assembly since 2022 has only strengthened the role of Gerard Larchet, whom the executive authority regularly tries to rely on to obtain concessions on legal texts.
In his draft addressed to his fellow senators and consulted by AFP, the patriarch of the House of Councilors intends to propose “a real cure for normative austerity,” he reiterated Monday.
A fierce defender of French territory, his priorities highlight the need to “return mayors to the heart of decision-making” and the “sincerely extended hand” of executive power.
The third figure in the state, Gérard Larcher has also returned to the front lines in recent years as he has played the role of the “counter-force” to which he is so closely associated through the Senate. The various investigative committees (Benala, consulting firms, Marian funds, etc.) led by the Senate had a significant influence on the public debate.
Mr. Larcher emphasized that the Senate “has managed to be the balancing point for a faltering democracy. It is a chamber that accepts its differences.”
The Senate continues its restructuring on Tuesday with the formalization of the composition of the parliamentary blocs, ahead of the renewal of offices and committees scheduled for Wednesday.
Most of the groups have already proceeded to elect their president, including the last group, the extremist group RDSE of about fifteen members, which chose Mariese Carrère (Radical Left Party) as its head on Monday.
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