Must admit, I had no idea what 49.3 meant, which is why I looked it up…
I gather, without picking up much on the detail, that this 49-3 allows for a motion that lies before the house and is gathering dust (has not been voted on for a lengthy period) can be passed and brought into law by prime ministerial mandate?
Sound quite reasonable to me. But it seems from the article that parliamentarians had overlooked the possibility. Wake up and smell the coffee, people? 
I may have missed the point completely, but I always try to improve my reading of journalistic French, even if it does my head in 
…
I suspect it would also do in a lot of French heads, as well as causing Google Translate to go into meltdown!
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For an allegedly exceptional measure to the democratic process of parliamentary debate and revision, successive French governments have been exceptionally keen to wield it when it suited their purpose. For all of the ultra-left’s complaint, recourse to Article 49.3 has apparently been made a total of 88 times since 1958.