French Prime Minister Michel Barnier did not believe that far-right leader Marine Le Pen would dare to censor her government, despite the numerous concessions made to her party, a central bloc group president said on Tuesday.
“Until yesterday, the Prime Minister did not believe that the RN (National Rally) would censor,” explained this source as the far-right party prepares to vote on Wednesday evening the motion of censure tabled by the left.
On Monday, the 73-year-old Prime Minister engaged the responsibility of the executive by having the Social Security budget adopted without a vote, exposing his government to a motion of censure while ensuring that he had been “at the end of the dialogue” with the groups policies.
During a meeting on Monday of the group leaders of the right and center right “common base”, during which Mr. Barnier informed his troops of his intention to use article 49.3 to pass the Security budget social without a vote, he absented himself to respond to Marine Le Pen.
“When he came back he was different. At one point he told us this phrase – I don’t think it was a calculated phrase, I really think it was spontaneous – ‘I didn’t believe she would dare’,” said this group leader. .
And paraphrasing Michel Barnier: “We see clearly that each time we let go of something, it asks for something else, and that at some point, we probably have to stop.”
According to the Prime Minister’s entourage, he had already spoken with her in the morning to announce that he was going to give in to her on the reductions in reimbursement for medicines.
In the afternoon, “she told him that ultimately, we need more pensions,” says the same source, regarding the indexation to inflation of only part of the pensions.
“More difficult and more serious”
Censorship “will make everything more difficult and more serious,” Prime Minister Michel Barnier warned on Tuesday.
“The situation is difficult on the budgetary level, on the financial level” and “very difficult on the economic and social level”, “remember (…) that the censorship which is in question tomorrow (Wednesday) (… ) will make everything more difficult and more serious,” he said before the National Assembly, responding to the leader of the communist deputies, André Chassaigne.
For the latter, it is the responsibility” of Mr. Barnier “if tomorrow we enter unknown territory”.
