What are the next steps in the calendar?

Fifty-one days after the resignation of Gabriel Attal, Emmanuel Macron finally appointed a prime minister on Thursday, September 5, in the person of Michel Barnier. An announcement that does not put an end to the political crisis, and opens the way to new questions, in a situation that remains eminently uncertain.

Who chooses the ministers?

Article 8 of the Constitution gives the President of the Republic the power to appoint members of the government. But he must do so “on the proposal of the Prime Minister”. In practice, the composition of the government generally results from a compromise between the two heads of the executive, here Emmanuel Macron and Michel Barnier. And, in this case, they will have to take into account the different sensitivities present in the National Assembly, by appointing personalities who can guarantee within the Chamber the broadest possible support for the new government, to avoid a motion of censure.

When will the ministers be appointed?

No formal timetable is imposed on Michel Barnier and Emmanuel Macron. In practice, there are generally a few days between the announcement of the Prime Minister and the composition of the government, the time to solicit the interested parties and to carry out checks on their probity with the High Authority for Transparency in Public Life (HATVP).

It was thus necessary to wait four days to know the composition of Elisabeth Borne’s government, in May 2022. At the beginning of the year, Gabriel Attal’s government was composed in two stages: an initial list of full ministers revealed after two days, then almost a month of waiting before the appointment of the deputy ministers and secretaries of state.

In this case, it is not impossible that the deadline for forming a government will be extended further due to the political situation. Michel Barnier will have to subtly manage the balance between the political currents, to maximize his chances of avoiding censure by a very divided National Assembly.

What happens in the meantime?

Until new ministers are appointed, the resigning ministers will remain in office to manage current affairs, as they have done since the resignation of the Attal government on July 16.

Can former ministers remain in office?

Nothing prevents the new prime minister from appointing members of the government who were previously in office. This is all the more unlikely since the last government included many members from the ranks of the right, such as Rachida Dati, Gérald Darmanin, Nicole Belloubet, Fréderic Valletoux, Aurore Bergé, etc. On the other hand, many ministers of the Attal government have publicly offered to remain in office, in the name of stability.

Should Michel Barnier deliver a general policy speech?

If there is no obligation to do so, it is customary for a new prime minister to come before the National Assembly and the Senate to present the guidelines of his programme, in what is called a general policy statement.

The Constitution does not impose any form or timetable. At the beginning of the year, Gabriel Attal had delivered his general policy statement at the Palais-Bourbon only 21 days after his appointment to Matignon. Appointed on May 16, 2022, Elisabeth Borne had waited 51 days.

This speech may be an opportunity for the new Prime Minister to engage his responsibility before the National Assembly, by proposing to the deputies to vote for or against confidence following his intervention. But this procedure, provided for in Article 49 of the Constitution, is not obligatory: if Edouard Philippe or Jean Castex had engaged in the exercise during Emmanuel Macron’s first five-year term, Elisabeth Borne and Gabriel Attal, who only had a relative majority, did not risk it. Indeed, in the event of rejection by more than half of the deputies, this vote of confidence forces the government to resign.

When can a motion of censure be tabled?

Even if Michel Barnier does not engage his confidence, deputies have the possibility of trying to overthrow him, as article 49 of the Constitution still provides. To do this, they must first gather the signatures of one tenth of the hemicycle to file a spontaneous motion of censure – that is, 58 deputies out of 577. This will be possible as soon as the Assembly begins to sit, that is to say at the latest on 1^is October – or even before, if Emmanuel Macron calls an extraordinary session, as requested by the President of the Assembly.

Once the motion of censure is tabled, a vote is held within forty-eight hours. If an absolute majority of deputies – 289 out of 577 elected – approve it, the government is forced to resign, and the president must appoint a new prime minister.

This scenario is far from impossible in the configuration of the new Assembly resulting from the legislative elections of June-July, fragmented and mostly hostile to President Macron. The socialists have already announced that they would censure the Barnier government, while the National Rally (RN) is conditioning its decision on the content of the general policy speech of the new prime minister. The presidential camp and the Republican Right (ex-Les Républicains) should, for their part, support the former European Commissioner.

Even if the New Popular Front and the National Rally, with their combined 319 seats, largely exceed the threshold needed to overthrow Michel Barnier, it is not clear that they will agree to unite their voices. For the motion of censure to work, the different opposition blocs must, in fact, vote for the same motion of censure. During the first two years of the five-year term, all 17 motions of censure tabled by the left, the far right and the independents of the LIOT group had failed, due to the lack of an alliance between the oppositions, which had tabled separate motions each time.

To date, in the history of the V^e Republic, only one spontaneous motion of censure was carried through to the end: the one that overthrew Prime Minister Georges Pompidou on October 5, 1962, by 280 votes out of a possible 480.