Marine Le Pen moved her red line in twenty-four hours

POLITICS – Butter, butter’s money… and Barnier’s skin. Marine Le Pen and her deputies announced this Monday, December 2 that they will vote on a motion of censure tabled in the National Assembly after the Prime Minister's recourse to article 49.3 of the Constitution to have his budget adopted. Security without a vote. His last concession to the attention of the extreme right will therefore not have been enough.

« We will take our responsibilities, we will vote on the motions of censure”explained Marine Le Pen, the president of the RN group to the Assembly around 4:30 p.m. in front of the cameras at the Palais Bourbon. However, a few minutes earlier, the tenant of Matignon still acceded to a demand from the Lepenists by renouncing the idea of ​​reimbursing less for certain medications.

A new concession, among others, which should in all likelihood have calmed the revolt of Marine Le Pen and her flock. At least according to the comments made the day before by the member for Pas-de-Calais. This Sunday in the columns of La Tribune Sunday, she actually demanded a gesture on only one of the last two red lines of her movement. The statement could not have been clearer: “ If the government gives us, on the one hand, discharge on the deindexation of pensions or on the non-reimbursement of medicines; on the other hand (…) if he tells us that he does not agree with our way of financing (his first concessions), that would pose no problem to me. »

Reliability gap

In other words, at this point in the negotiations, a deal still seemed possible if the government gave up on retirement pensions. or » reimbursement of medications. Nothing happened this Monday. If Michel Barnier made the expected gesture on the second point, announcing via a press release that he was giving up recovering a billion euros on medicines, Matignon's move on this basis of negotiation was finally (and retroactively) judged insufficient for Marine Le Pen.

After a meeting with her deputies, the three-time presidential candidate effectively demanded that the Prime Minister respond to her, in addition, on the indexation of retirement pensions, even before he initiated 49.3 on his text. The new gesture did not come, Marine Le Pen, not unhappy to relegate her legal setbacks to the background, therefore passes the second. What reminds the head of government of the unreliability of the extreme right, which he nevertheless chose as his interlocutor to save his skin?

Questioned in the National Assembly, the head of the RN deputies rejected any trial of versatility, explaining on the contrary that its “ red lines ” are ” known for a long time. » « Things were clear, Michel Barnier did not wish to respond “, she assured, indicating in passing that her request on retirement pensions (a cost of at least 3 billion euros) was not ” intolerable. » “It was unbearable to refuse her “, she blurted.

Alas, Michel Barnier seems to close the ban. In his speech to the Assembly, to activate article 49.3 of the Constitution, he suggested that he would not go further in concessions. As if he had understood that it was impossible to satisfy the National Rally, eager to raise the stakes and savor his place as arbiter entrusted to him by the executive. Difficult, in these conditions, to avoid falling.

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