Censorship of Michel Barnier's government seems closer than ever this Sunday evening, with the National Rally affirming that there were now no more discussions with the executive on the social security budget which must be submitted Monday to the National Assembly.
In an increasingly febrile political climate, the Prime Minister “remains open to dialogue as he has been from the beginning”, his entourage said.
Marine Le Pen, the leader of the RN deputies, had just increased the pressure by an additional skull on the eve of this decisive parliamentary session.
“The government has expressed its wish not to modify the PLFSS (bill on the financing of social security), it is extremely clear and we have taken note of this,” Marine Le Pen told AFP.
It was based on statements by the Minister of Public Accounts Laurent Saint-Martin to the newspaper Le Parisien published on Saturday evening in which he affirmed that the text was no longer subject to change.
“To return” to this text, the result of an agreement within a joint committee bringing together deputies and senators, “would be to sit on Parliament, democracy and deliberation whose compromise we respect”, he said. -he justified.
An “extremely closed and sectarian behavior”, declared Marine Le Pen, without specifying the censorship of the government with which her party has been threatening Michel Barnier for several weeks.
The leading political group in the National Assembly, the far-right party can bring down the government if it supports a motion of censure that the left plans to table if the Prime Minister uses article 49.3 of the Constitution.
The RN demanded new concessions from the government, particularly on the increase in retirement pensions.
The executive can modify the text until the last moment, that is to say Monday afternoon. The Assembly will meet from 3:00 p.m.
“Absolute red line”
The RN poses “an absolute red line”, said one of its deputies, Jean-Philippe Tanguy, on Sunday, demanding that the government renounce the partial deindexation of pensions to inflation.
“It is a social contract between those who have contributed and the rest of society,” he said in the program Questions Politiques on France Inter.
After having obtained that the government abandons the increase in taxes on electricity and makes a concession on State Medical Aid (AME), the RN also wants it to return to the dereimbursement of certain medicines.
The social security budget, on which the Assembly will have to vote, is full of irritants for the oppositions, both on the left and the far right.
Without a majority, the Prime Minister could activate article 49.3, which allows the approval of a text without a vote. He would then be exposed to a motion of censure which could be examined as early as Wednesday.
If the left and the National Rally unite their voices, the government will fall. This would be a first since the fall of Georges Pompidou's government in 1962.
The left, for its part, warned that it would vote for censorship without qualms and would denounce the government's dependence on the RN.
“Marine Le Pen shows Michel Barnier every day which side of the leash he is on. The Macronists will be defeated and dishonored,” said environmentalist leader Marine Tondelier on Sunday.
If the Prime Minister decides not to use 49.3 and the text is rejected, he would leave for a new parliamentary shuttle.
The RN denounces in advance a very complex constitutional scenario which would see the parliamentary debate bog down and the government legislate by ordinance, as it can do 50 days after the tabling of the text.
Three budgetary texts
Pillar of “barnierism”, dominated by a right-centrist alliance which supports the government, the Senate voted on Sunday without surprise for the entire “revenue” part of the state budget.
A sign of the tension that reigns, left-wing senators left the chamber during the debates, criticizing a “coup de force” by the government and the senatorial right, who requested a new examination of several dozen measures at the last minute .
In total, three budgetary texts are currently being examined by Parliament: the 2025 State budget, the Social Security budget and the end-of-management bill for the current year. On each of them, the risk of censorship exists.
The government is looking for 60 billion euros in savings to raise flagging public finances and reduce the deficit to 5% of GDP in 2025, compared to 6.1% in 2024.
