“Until yesterday, the Prime Minister did not believe that the RN would censor,” explained a group president of the central bloc, while the far-right party is preparing to vote on Wednesday evening the motion of censure tabled by the LEFT. During the meeting of group leaders of the “common base” (Renaissance, MoDem, Horizons and LR), during which Michel Barnier informed his troops of his intention to use 49.3 to have the Social Security budget adopted without a vote, the latter 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 the frontist leader in the morning to announce to her that he was going to give in to her on reductions in reimbursement for medicines. In the afternoon, “she told him that, ultimately, we need more pensions,” the same source says about the inflation indexation of only part of the pensions. “There, Le Pen is giving up,” breathes the Prime Minister’s entourage, since the former presidential candidate had assured Sunday that pensions or medicines, the government had to give in on one of the two economies.
“Yesterday, it was medicine or pensions, we give them the medicine. Now we also need pensions. There will always be something,” said Michel Barnier, according to the group leader. “There is a choice that was made (by the RN), in any case, they would have found a narrative to do it,” he conceded, again according to this source.
Another sign of refusal of an outstretched hand: according to Michel Barnier’s entourage, Marine Le Pen’s “close guard” refused “meeting opportunities” to Matignon “on three occasions. An assertion to which the RN and Marine Le Pen’s entourage immediately responded. “No, we formally deny” these invitations, they insisted to AFP.
“The first contact with Michel Barnier’s office took place on November 8 at our request,” the same source assured. “After the first discussions, we were told that ‘the Prime Minister’s agenda was very tense’ and that it would be difficult to receive Marine Le Pen. It was almost a month ago.”
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