The ministers of the new French government took office on Tuesday, but the Socialist Party has already not ruled out quickly censoring it in the name of too much “dependence” on the far right.
“I am convinced that the action that I defined before you and the government team will ensure that we will not be censored,” declared the 73-year-old centrist Prime Minister, François Bayrou, on Monday evening, a few hours after announcing the composition of his government.
He is the fourth Prime Minister in 2024. His previous one lasted three months, an instability not seen in France for decades.
“None of the conditions of the non-censorship pact have been respected” in the composition of the new government, nevertheless replied Tuesday the leader of the Socialist Party (left), Olivier Faure, who specified that his group could vote for censure as soon as the Prime Minister's general policy declaration on January 14.
The two former Prime Ministers Elisabeth Borne, appointed to Education, and Manuel Valls, to Overseas Territories, are particularly scrutinized, as is another returnee, Gérald Darmanin, who will occupy the Justice portfolio.
Darmanin promised to work “hand in hand” with Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau, one of the 19 ministers in the reappointed Barnier government. He is committed to making narco-banditry and drug trafficking his “absolute priority”.
Priority: deficit
For her part, Borne, who left the post of Prime Minister at the start of the year, said she “lucid”. “I am the sixth minister to be appointed in a little over two and a half years (to Education) and I understand the difficulties and expectations of the educational community,” she stressed, emphasizing the importance of “put a stop to the rise of incivility, insults, even violence” and to “attacks on secularism in our schools”.
The new Minister of the Economy, Eric Lombard, former director of the public financial institution Caisse des Dépôts et Consignations, for his part immediately called for “treat our endemic disease, the deficit”.
This will be the first challenge for the Bayrou team: passing a budget for 2025 in the National Assembly, where deputies from the left and far right overthrew his predecessor Michel Barnier on December 4.
Bayrou said he was sensitive to “alert signal” unprecedented launched with one voice last week by the three employers' organizations and four of the five representative unions on the economic and social risks that the“instability has generated”.
Among the “Himalayas” that he says he must confront are the debt, which reached 113.7% of GDP or 3.303 billion euros at the end of September, and the public deficit.
This plunged to 6.1% of GDP this year. Michel Barnier hoped to bring it down to 5% at the end of 2025.
Provocation
François Bayrou believes that the presence of heavyweights in his team protects him, for lack of having opened his government further to the left.
He expects, after his general policy declaration, that a motion of censure will be tabled, as the radical left party La France insoumise (LFI) intends.
The far-right National Rally (RN) party, the largest group in the Assembly, has indicated that it will not, a priori, censor the new executive.
The rumor, denied by Bayrou, is of a telephone exchange between the Prime Minister and the leader of the French far right Marine Le Pen in the final adjustments to the composition of the government.
In fact, the boss of the socialist party condemned on Monday a government of “extreme right” shaped like « provocation ».
Le Pen, for his part, assured Tuesday that the French would bring “soon, very soon, at worst in a few months” to choose “a new way”.
And the president of his party Jordan Bardella did not mince his words against the government list: “Luckily ridicule doesn’t kill” car “François Bayrou brought together the coalition of failure.”
On the side of the right-wing Les Républicains (LR) party, which remains in government, Laurent Wauquiez spoke of support “very demanding” to François Bayrou who could be “ retirement “ depending on the heading displayed.
The government team has 35 members, fewer than that of Michel Barnier (42), with near parity (18 women, 17 men). The first council of ministers is scheduled for January 3.
