Cornered on all sides and still without a government team after a criticized start, François Bayrou proposed Thursday to the parties, excluding RN and LFI, to join his government, saying he was ready to “resume” the pension reform without suspending it, during ‘a great meeting of political forces.
According to Matignon and several participants in these talks, the new Prime Minister tried to convince the thirty officials seated around him with two flagship proposals.
The first: a “public offer of participation” in the government, addressed to all the parties present around the table.
The second: “resume without suspending” the pension reform adopted in 2023 – which the left and the RN want to repeal –, indicated Matignon. With one objective, to achieve “new solutions” “by September”, several participants explained to AFP. “And if we don’t succeed, we return to the 2023 reform” which notably shifted the starting age to 64, Matignon said.
The discussions began shortly after 2:00 p.m., in the Matignon council room and around a table covered in red. Present were the presidents of the National Assembly Yaël Braun-Pivet and of the Senate Gérard Larcher, and “the presidents of parties and groups who had responsibility for the affairs of the country at one period or another of the Fifth Republic”.
A formulation which excludes the National Rally and its ally, Éric Ciotti’s UDR, as well as La France insoumise, founded in 2016.
However, there is no guarantee that the Prime Minister’s proposals will move the lines, as the reception of this summit meeting was cool among certain guests, even if all honored their participation.
The reaction did not take long on the side of La France insoumise. “Normally, adults no longer believe in Santa Claus,” joked his coordinator Manuel Bompard on X.
Sitting in Matignon to the left of Mr. Bayrou – a coincidence of the table plan – the head of the Ecologists Marine Tondelier did not mince her words, either, when she arrived: “François Bayrou has his censorship in his hands, it “It’s up to him to convince us,” she said.
“He must move on pensions”, “on public services”, “on taxes, on solidarity”, had warned earlier the president of the PS deputies Boris Vallaud on Sud radio.
– A government on Sunday? –
Appointed on Friday, François Bayrou has since increased the number of official or more informal interviews.
But his first week in Matignon was above all marked by the barrage of criticism on his presence Monday evening at the Municipal Council of Pau, a city of which he intends to remain mayor, when a cyclone had just ravaged Mayotte.
He had to explain this on Tuesday for his first session at the National Assembly, without succeeding in silencing the critics. All while increasing the number of trips to the Élysée for the formation of the government.
Emmanuel Macron being in Mayotte on Thursday, before then going to French troops in Djibouti, several actors are talking about a government announcement on Sunday. The two executive houses give no date.
Without a majority in the Assembly, the centrist, who has been advocating for decades a government bringing together various sensitivities, is facing strong demands from the Republicans (LR) on the right and growing attempts at censorship on the left.
The meeting format is reminiscent of that of nine days ago around Emmanuel Macron at the Élysée, where scenarios of non-censorship of oppositions were discussed, in exchange for an absence of recourse to 49.3 by the government or upon dissolution by the president.
– “A chimera” –
But the LRs are increasing the pressure. On Wednesday, François Bayrou received the resigning Minister of the Interior Bruno Retailleau, who had just declared that the conditions were “not met” for his continuation at Place Beauvau.
“I have no red line”, however, clarified Thursday on TF1 Gérard Larcher who judges that it is necessary “to provide remedies on the return to budgetary balance and the question of security”. “It is urgent to have a government,” he insisted.
Same criticism with reversed front coming from the left: “If he comes to offer us the same budget that Mr Barnier had proposed (…), we censor”, insisted the communist Fabien Roussel.
The meeting in Matignon is “a pipe dream”, launched Mathilde Panot. The head of the deputies of La France insoumise says she “believes” that the four components of the New Popular Front (PS, PCF, Ecologists and LFI) will vote on the motion of censure that her group will table on January 14, after François’ general policy declaration Bayrou.
The Prime Minister only received 36% satisfaction according to an Ifop survey for Sud Radio on Thursday, compared to 52% and 53% for his predecessors Michel Barnier and Gabriel Attal, when they started at Matignon.