Lhe year was to end on a moment of collective pride with the reopening of Notre-Dame de Paris, saved from collapse and restored in five years. She ends up feeling dizzy. This time, it is French politics which is in flames: three months after his appointment, the firefighter Michel Barnier is running out of expedients to prevent the fire from taking away his government, which would be a lesser evil, but the credibility of the country itself.
Whether with the French, disgusted by political games who have forgotten the sense of the general interest, or with international investors, who are preparing to downgrade France like Greece in 2010 during the euro crisis , the country's credit has never seemed so damaged in ages. Without a budget, without ideas, without the desire to find compromises that are nevertheless inevitable, he slowly consumes himself, fascinated by his own powerlessness.
There is no need to recall the memory of the motion of censure of 1962, when Parliament, furious with Gaull's plan to elect the President by universal suffrage, reared up, bringing down the Pompidou government. Because, at the top of the state, Charles de Gaulle had the legitimacy and the strength of conviction to persuade the French to reform institutions. Six decades later, everyone feels that the V systeme République is seized but the General's distant successor, weighed down by a hazardous dissolution, has become a simple spectator of the rout.
Notre-Dame, saved from the fire, is restored. But this time, it's French politics that is in flames
Let us not prejudge Emmanuel Macron's reaction and let us not bury Michel Barnier before his time. But let's agree that the current spiral comes from a long way away. Accelerated by the jump without a net at the dissolution of June, he led France into the trap. Pivotal of our political system, the President seems as fragile as the keystone of the Gothic arches of Notre-Dame under fire from the frames.
And it is not reassuring to think that in the extreme case of a resignation of the head of state, the one who dreams of replacing him and who does everything to push the head of government towards the exit by the accumulation of his demands – we have named Marine Le Pen – is under threat of ineligibility for having diverted millions of euros of public money to the benefit of her party.
Impossible is not French, they sometimes say. For now, we're talking about the worst, hence this feeling of dizziness and decay. So, please, stop the fire!
