The fall of Michel Barnier on Wednesday puts the political class in turmoil. In the National Assembly, 331 deputies voted for the motion of censure tabled by the left in response to the Prime Minister's 49.3 to pass the draft Social Security budget without a vote. Michel Barnier will therefore submit his resignation to the President of the Republic this Thursday morning.
All eyes are now on the Élysée, with Emmanuel Macron under pressure to choose a new Prime Minister. While waiting to know his choice, the oppositions as well as those supporting the presidential camp did not fail to react to the vote against Michel Barnier and to express their choices to escape the political instability. From Marine Le Pen to Jean-Luc Mélenchon, via Edouard Philippe, here are the main reactions to the political crisis shaking the country:
LFI leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon considered that “inevitable censorship has taken place”. “Even with a Barnier every three months, Macron will not last three years,” he said on X, while the president of the group in the Assembly Mathilde Panot, once again asked Emmanuel Macron to “ go away “.
The national secretary of the PCF Fabien Roussel assured that his party had “voted censorship to protect the French from one of the worst budgets, hard for employees, public services, industry, municipalities”. In his eyes, “this is a serious time!” The president must turn to the left to appoint a government capable of building majorities.”
“We must respect this choice and accept a left-wing Prime Minister who is open to compromise,” said PS First Secretary Olivier Faure on France 2. “I hope that we can negotiate a non-censorship agreement, in exchange what we are ready to govern without 49.3,” he added.
Green MP Sandrine Rousseau estimated that “there is no major crisis. […] It’s just the progress of democracy in the face of a President of the Republic who refuses to accept reality, who denies reality: the reality is that he lost,” she insisted. .
Marine Le Pen justified on TF1 her decision to join the votes of the RN to those of the New Popular Front to bring down Michel Barnier by assuring that the latter had not “kept his promises”, his budget being in her eyes “toxic” for the French. The leader of the RN deputies assured that she would let her successor “work”. “We will co-construct – not only with the National Rally, with all the forces present in the National Assembly – a budget which is acceptable to all, and it is this budget which will apply to the French” .
In the presidential camp, the MoDem group in the Assembly estimated that by “censoring the Barnier government, the alliance of opposites betrays the voters and reveals its incapacity to govern under the guise of irresponsibility. Hundreds of measures expected by the French are thus sacrificed.”
For his part, the president of Horizons, Edouard Philippe, judged on X that “government censorship reinforces political disorder and weakens our country”. “We will do everything to stabilize the political situation. But let’s be clear, we are on the brink of the abyss,” he warned.
At Renaissance, the president of the South region, Renaud Muselier, called for “initiating a process with a view to the constitution of a coalition”, which would begin not with the choice of a new Prime Minister, but “with the development of a program limited in time and in its ambitions”. It “must be implemented by a national safeguard government made up of democratic political forces, the alliance of adversaries against the conspiracy of enemies,” he wrote.
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On “We will continue to work towards the recovery of the country. Our choice will always be that of the best interests of the Nation and concern for the expectations of the French, as opposed to those who voted for this motion of censure,” he added.
