The Minister of the Economy calls on the oppositions not to put “the country in the red” over political disagreements.
Antoine Armand in Paris, November 26, 2024. (AFP / BERTRAND GUAY)
While an alliance of the left and the far right could bring down the Barnier government in the days to come, the French Minister of Economy and Finance, Antoine Armand, assured Thursday November 28 that the government was ready to make “concessions” on budgetary texts to avoid the economic and financial “storm” that according to him the fall of the government would cause.
“Whatever differences in values we have, today we are faced with
an extremely serious situation for the country
. The Prime Minister spoke of a storm. It is not a word chosen at random, it is a word that has
a financial, economic and budgetary resonance
and we are obviously ready to make concessions to avoid this storm”, declared Antoine Armand on the media
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The minister notably mentioned
the electricity tax, the planned increase of which is deemed “inadmissible”
by the far-right National Rally (RN) party, which has the largest number of elected officials in the National Assembly.
The question of electricity tax
Formed on September 21 at the end of several weeks of political crisis following the unexpected dissolution of the National Assembly by President Emmanuel Macron, the government of conservative Michel Barnier is fragile. The left and the extreme right could bring it down, by voting together on a motion of censure in the event of recourse by the government to article 49.3 of the Constitution – which allows a text to be passed without a vote by incurring the responsibility of the 'executive- on the Social Security budget or that of the State.
“What I say to political parties who have nothing in common (…) it is not because we do not agree with a policy that we put a country in the red (. ..), that we are plunging the country into the budgetary and financial unknown”, launched Antoine Armand, on the eve of the decision of the S&P rating agency on France's debt.
France is heavily in debt and the government wants to vote on many highly criticized economies.
Threatening to vote on censorship with the left, the leader of the French far right, Marine Le Pen, demanded
“clear and firm commitments on abandoning the 3 billion euros in electricity price increases
(to the state budget), the abandonment of the de-reimbursement of new medicines and the de-indexation of pensions” on inflation.
