LIVE – Government: Macron will receive Bayrou again at the Elysée on Wednesday afternoon

Prime Minister François Bayrou continues his consultations on Wednesday with a view to forming a government, a task which is becoming more complicated by the hour between the demands of the left and the RN and the threat of LR not to join. Tuesday, the historic ally of Emmanuel Macron who finally took over Matignon after 40 years of political life suffered a storm of criticism from all sides for having chosen to attend the Municipal Council of Pau rather than devoting himself to the management of the crisis in Mayotte devastated by a cyclone.

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But also on the way in which he justified himself, by defending the accumulation of mandates then by suggesting before the National Assembly that Pau was “in France” while Mayotte is a French department.

“Special law” adopted by Parliament

Parliament definitively adopts a “special law” after a final unanimous vote in the Senate, to compensate for the absence of a budget for 2025. A text adopted urgently so that France avoids the “shutdwon” in the absence of a budget after censorship of the government of Michel Barnier.

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After the National Assembly on Monday, the upper house identically approved this atypical bill and very limited in its scope, which authorizes the executive to collect taxes and borrow to finance the State and Social Security. . It can therefore be promulgated before December 31, but will not spare the government and Parliament from providing France with a budget for 2025.

Macron will receive Bayrou again at the Elysée on Wednesday afternoon

Emmanuel Macron will receive his Prime Minister François Bayrou again on Wednesday afternoon at the Elysée to move forward on the composition of the government, before leaving Paris until Sunday to go to Brussels, Mayotte, Djibouti and Ethiopia, a- we learned from the president’s entourage.

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This source was not able to say if this new meeting, after the two talks on Tuesday, could lead to the government’s announcement before the departure of the Head of State, or if it is a matter of ‘a milestone. “It’s progressing,” said someone close to Emmanuel Macron after Tuesday’s meetings.

Retailleau believes that the conditions “are not met” to stay in government

On Wednesday, the torments came from elsewhere. While François Bayrou tries to present a tight team of around 25 ministers with personalities from the left, the center and the right, according to parliamentary sources, LR issues conditions.

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The resigning Minister of the Interior Bruno Retailleau, expected to stay at Place Beauvau, estimated on Wednesday that the conditions “are not met” for him to remain in government. Speaking on behalf of his party, he explained that LR “will try to see in the coming days whether a certain number of obstacles are removed.” “It would be a shame if the government moved to the left while France is on the right,” warned Bruno Retailleau, who met the Prime Minister for an hour in the morning.

Concerning the composition of the government, the shot also came from the far right. LR President of Hauts-de-France Xavier Bertrand or former Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne in the team is no, for RN MP Laure Lavalette. They “do not embody the break” with Macronism desired by the French, she explained on France Inter.

The RN raises its tone on the preparation of the budget

Beyond that, it was increasingly clearly stated threats of censorship that raised the stakes on Wednesday. “If François Bayrou does not take into account the errors that Michel Barnier may have made, both in form and in substance, he will also head towards the same consequences, that is to say sooner or later towards censorship”, thus warned the vice-president of the RN Sébastien Chenu.

Blowing hot and cold on the president of Modem, who maintains cordial relations with Marine Le Pen, the frontist party is starting to raise its voice on the preparation of the budget, without wanting to “overwhelm” François Bayrou in the intense controversy around his round trip to Pau.

Eric Ciotti (UDR, ally of the RN) insisted upon leaving Matignon on Wednesday on the possibility of censorship “if tomorrow, there was a budget” increasing taxes on businesses and individuals.

Bayrou “is writing the story of his own censorship”, says Tondelier

But the far right is not the only one to put pressure on Matignon. François Bayrou, “day after day, hour after hour, is writing the story of his own censorship”, said Wednesday the boss of the Ecologists, Marine Tondelier, for whom “failed introductions do not matter. don’t catch up.”

“If he comes to offer us the same budget that Mr. Barnier proposed, that is to say we just change the people, but we have the same, the same budgets, the same difficulties for the French, we will censor this budget “there”, insisted the communist Fabien Roussel, whose group plans to vote for censorship as soon as the general policy declaration is made on January 14.

More moderate, Johanna Rolland, first deputy secretary of the PS, called on BFMTV to have “interlocutors, men and women who sit around the table and who tell us the path of compromise, to move towards a non- censorship, which can be posed”.

A government not before Sunday?

In the middle of each of these obstacles another unknown arises: when will François Bayrou be able to present his government? “It seems to me that the discussions are still very advanced,” said the president of the Modem deputies Marc Fesneau, very close to the Prime Minister, while the latter met Emmanuel Macron twice on Tuesday on this subject.

An assertion confirmed to AFP by a source close to François Bayrou, while recognizing that if the LR component and Bruno Retailleau get stuck, “we’re getting into trouble”. A new meeting at the Elysée is planned for Wednesday afternoon. Previously François Bayrou received his predecessor Gabriel Attal, now head of the Macronist deputies.

In any case, there will be no government announcement a priori before Sunday, the President of the Republic will be traveling to Brussels (European Council) on Wednesday, then to Mayotte on Thursday and finally to French troops in Djibouti until his return to France on Sunday morning.