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Comment by baby | Hacker News Reader

You cannot do that in the US right?

Correct. We have nothing like that. We also don't have the notion of a "motion of no confidence", which is the balance to it.

It basically forces the whole issue. They can overturn it by throwing the entire thing back to the people with a new election.

The US does have Executive Orders, which allow the President an unspecified amount of power. These can be used to work around a recalcitrant Congress. The limits of executive orders are poorly specified, and it's kind of tossed over to the Supreme Court to figure out.

It's pretty clear that an Executive Order raising the retirement age would be rejected, since it's clearly specified in legislation. But you can never really tell for sure.

And I’m thankful it can’t be up to the executive branch (who ever is the president) to make such drastic decisions.

No. 49.3 is a provision of the French constitution that lets presidents pass a law without a vote of Parliament. But Parliament can, with a simple majority, vote no-confidence in the government, which annulls the law and forces all government ministers to resign.

The US analogy would be, if Biden could have told the Senate: "the only way you can stop Build Back Better, is by also forcing all my Cabinet-level officials to resign"

Except that the President (at least in theory) cannot simply pass a law without Congress.

I can anticipate that this would be actively pushed for under many administrations... What stops such a vote from being called until the French presidency forms into a form that parliament likes?

The analogy breaks down quite quickly because the political/philosophical foundations are so different. One, the French President isn't removed via a vote of no confidence. Two, hopefully you would call votes of no-confidence until the gov't does reflect what the majority wants. That's the foundation of democracy... Three, this proviso was created specifically to overcome the delinquency brought on by multiple govt's in quick succession.

I don't think this is actually that unpopular with the MPs, they just don't want to be responsible for it. This has been in the cards forever with both right wing and PS governments claiming they'd tackle some part of it at least, but got intimidated by protests. Now Macron can finally do the unpopular law and they don't have to take any blame.

Macron has a very useful (or dangerous) arrogance compared to other French leaders, when he thinks he's right he won't be intimidated. It was almost comical seeing him in his suit going to gatherings full of random yellow vests "taking questions" just to explain to each of them why they're wrong on national TV night after night a few years ago. Also infuriating if you disagree with him

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