President Emmanuel Macron promised the French on Thursday evening to appoint a new Prime Minister “in the coming days”. The country once again finds itself without a government, in an alarming budgetary context and an atmosphere of political crisis.
During a televised speech delivered the day after a historic parliamentary censorship which overthrew the government of Michel Barnier, the head of state castigated the oppositions who voted for censorship, accusing the radical left and the far right of having united “in an anti-republican front” and of wanting to “create disorder”.
“They don’t think about you, about your income, your projects, they only think about one thing, the presidential election, to prepare for it, to rush it, and that with cynicism and a certain sense of chaos,” he asserted.
The next presidential election is scheduled for 2027, but some, particularly the radical left, are calling for Mr. Macron to resign.
He is “the cause of the problem” and “will go away through the force of events”, said the leader of the radical left Jean-Luc Mélenchon on a television channel just after the president’s speech.
But Mr. Macron brushed aside this hypothesis, assuring that he would serve his presidential term “until its end” in 2027.
“Misunderstood” dissolution
On Wednesday, Michel Barnier became the most short-lived Prime Minister of the Fifth Republic after being censored by a majority of deputies just three months after taking office.
France has already been without a government for several weeks this summer, after a dissolution and early legislative elections which resulted in an Assembly fragmented into three blocs (alliance of the left, Macronists and right, extreme right) without an absolute majority. The resigning government had carried out current affairs until the painful appointment of Michel Barnier at the beginning of September.
Emmanuel Macron admitted Thursday evening that his decision to dissolve had not been “understood”, assuming “his responsibility”.
According to the head of state, the next government will have a “priority”: the budget. And if a new budget will have to be presented at “the very beginning of next year”, the president affirmed that a “special law will be tabled before mid-December in Parliament”, a text which will allow “the continuity of public services and of the life of the country. It will apply “the (budgetary) choices of 2024” for 2025.
The budgetary situation of the second largest economy in the euro zone requires an executive quickly. Expected at 6.1% of GDP in 2024, the public deficit will miss its target of 5% in the absence of a budget.
-The President of the National Assembly Yaël Braun-Pivet, who was received on Thursday by Emmanuel Macron, hoped that Michel Barnier’s successor would be appointed “quickly” so as to “not allow uncertainty to set in”.
“Blurred”, “impasse”, “vicious circle”: from the north to the south of the country, concern and weariness were evident among the French people interviewed by AFP.
According to a Toluna Harris Interactive poll for RTL, the situation leaves the French divided: 53% approve of the MPs’ censorship decision, but 82% are worried about its consequences.
The markets, however, remained calm: the Paris Stock Exchange was up slightly and the rate at which France borrows on the markets was even trending downward. But the Moody’s agency warns that the fall of the government “reduces the probability of consolidation” of public finances.
Puzzle
The equation for forming a new government promises to be just as complex as it was for appointing Michel Barnier.
Both the left, the center and the right appear disunited to agree on a new coalition government.
For the centrists and the right, working with the socialists and ecologists implies that the latter break away from the radical left party La France insoumise (LFI), with which they form the New Popular Front (NFP), the first force to ‘Assembly.
LFI, for its part, has already warned on Thursday that its party would censor any Prime Minister not from the left alliance, but above all is calling for the resignation of the head of state and an “early presidential election”.
Socialists and ecologists say they are ready to compromise with the central bloc, which would in return undertake not to censor a left-wing government.
The far right, which plays the role of arbiter and precipitated the censorship of the Barnier government, assures that it will let the future head of government “work” to “co-construct a budget acceptable to all”.
