The National Assembly voted this Wednesday to censure the Barnier government. After three hours of debate, 331 deputies, including those of the National Rally, voted in favor of the motion tabled by the left, out of the 288 necessary for its adoption, precipitating the fall of the executive.
Michel Barnier, who had engaged the government's responsibility by activating article 49.3 of the Constitution to have the 2025 Social Security budget adopted, will have to submit his resignation to the President of the Republic. Until a new team is formed, the Barnier government, the shortest of the Fifth Republic, will remain in charge of current affairs.
This is the second time a government is overthrown by a motion of censure under the Fifth Republic, after that of Georges Pompidou in 1962. At the time, General de Gaulle had taken the decision to dissolve the National Assembly immediately, in order to reshuffle the cards of the majority. An option that Emmanuel Macron will not be able to use, a new dissolution being impossible before next summer, i.e. one year later that decided on June 9.
“There was no other solution”, assures Marine Le Pen
On TF1, Marine Le Pen assured that “there was no other solution” than censorship, while Valérie Pécresse regretted “a sad day for France”. “The French will judge harshly the choice of those who claim to straighten out the country and today choose disorder.”reacted on X Laurent Wauquiez, the president of the Republican Right group in the Assembly.
On the left, Fabien Roussel asks Emmanuel Macron to turn to the NFP to appoint a government. “We voted for censorship to protect the French from one of the worst hard budgets for employees, public services, industry, municipalities,” he said. La France insoumise, through the voice of the president of the group in the Assembly Mathilde Panot, once again asked “for Emmanuel Macron to leave”claiming “early presidential elections”
Emmanuel Macron must now appoint a new Prime Minister
Barely three months after appointing Michel Barnier, after lengthy consultations, the President of the Republic will therefore have to appoint a new Prime Minister with the same constraints. If the equation seems insoluble, speculation is in any case already rife: the first secretary of the PS Olivier Faure called on Emmanuel Macron to appoint a “Left-wing prime minister”but open “compromise”in disagreement with LFI which calls for the resignation of the head of state. The former Prime Minister and president of the Ensemble pour la République group, Gabriel Attal, advocates a non-censorship agreement which would go from the LR to the PS, to escape the supervision of the RN, Jordan Bardella having already warned that the red lines of the RN on budgets must be “heard in full” by the future government. The vice-president of Modem Marc Fesneau, for his part, pleaded with his president François Bayrou, whose profile “most relevant” according to him. And the LRs are threatening to regain their freedom, the government coalition not being worth “only for Michel Barnier”according to Laurent Wauquiez.
Many, like the President of the Assembly Yaël Braun-Pivet, are in any case pleading for a quick solutionwhich allows the budgetary texts to be completed at least in part before the deadline of December 31. Failing this, deputies will have to vote for a “special law” which will ensure the continuity of the functioning of the State.
