Michel Barnier fell. For the first time since 1962, a government was dismissed by a motion of censure. All eyes are now on Emmanuel Macron, responsible for appointing a replacement for Matignon and finding a solution for the 2025 budget, frozen by censorship. Several scenarios are emerging and portend a more unstable, authoritarian and reactionary period.
Although Macron has declared that he wants to appoint a new prime minister as soon as possible, the division of parliament makes the search for a new prime minister an obstacle course. It could thus be that the Barnier government remains in place, for a more or less long period, to manage “current affairs”.
This new resigned government, after that of Attal, could however attempt to pass the various budgetary texts by using constitutional trickery. Although the government has been censored, some constitutionalists consider that a motion of censure does not amount to “rejection of the text”, opening the way to the use of article 47 as soon as the deadlines have expired. But this authoritarian maneuver would have a political cost, as constitutionalist Benjamin Morel explains: “It is politically very complicated, it means that a government which has been censored sits on Parliament to pass a budget which has been rejected.” Above all, it has all the makings of a constitutional somersault and would represent a more brutal coup than any 49-3.
Given the situation, it is more likely that Macron will try to appoint a new government to limit the damage. Faced with the different groups, it is unlikely that he will be able to do it at full speed, as he hopes, in 24 hours when it took two months to appoint Barnier. The president could first try to appoint a new prime minister who would buy favors from the far right in exchange for new racist concessions. Several names are already circulating in the press: Sébastien Lecornu, the current Minister of the Armed Forces, “ well seen by RN elected officials », or even Bruno Retailleau, Minister of the Interior and architect of an immigration law modeled on the program of the far-right. In another register, The World quotes François Bayrou, who “ ensured the good graces of Marine Le Pen » by criticizing the sentence of ineligibility required against the head of the RN in the fictitious jobs affair.
The other hypothesis would be to appoint a technical government, whose task would be to take care of current affairs. Names of senior officials are already on the table: Thierry Baudet, Thierry Breton, former European commissioner, or François Villeroy de Galhau. It would also be possible to imagine a coalition government, which would go from the PS to the LR. While the idea of a non-aggression pact is gaining ground in the PS, Gabriel Attal is trying to find a compromise without LFI and the RN. After the pledges given by the PS to the government at the start of the week, this recomposition will have to be closely monitored. A possible PS-LR bloc would, however, be fragile while Laurent Wauquiez has already clarified that the “common base” “was only valid for Michel Barnier” and that the PS is calling for a Prime Minister “sharing the values of the left” .
In any case, the new government could delay by proposing a special law to compensate for the rejection of the budget, provided for by article 45 of the organic law relating to finance laws (LOLF), used for the last time in 1979. It would allow the State to renew the 2024 budget, collect taxes and ensure the payment of civil servants, by requesting parliamentary approval every month. Last year’s austerity budget would therefore be applied in part, pending a new finance law. A solution which would not solve much and which would certainly not reassure the financial markets.
If the situation of ungovernability were to continue, at the risk of pushing the markets to attack the debt, the hypothesis of the use of full powers was also cited. On the grounds that “ the institutions of the Republic, the independence of the Nation, the integrity of its territory or the execution of its international commitments are threatened in a serious and immediate manner and the regular functioning of constitutional public powers is interrupted », Macron could trigger Article 16. The newspaper of European financial capital, the Financial Times, already seems to consider that this is the best way to resolve the situation.
By triggering such an article, which was only used once by General de Gaulle to put down the Algiers putsch in 1961, Macron would however be pushing the regime into the unknown: it would be a leap unprecedented Bonapartist in the history of the Fifth Republic. But between the letter of the Constitution and the president’s flagging legitimacy, such an option could immediately turn against him.
In fact, the president is in an extremely fragile situation, and his resignation is being discussed more and more openly. A sign of the scale of the crisis, the hypothesis is developed within the “common base” of Jean-François Copé, LR deputy, to Charles de Courson, LIOT deputy. France Insoumise even went so far as to send a letter to the Minister of the Interior to ask for the arrangements for organizing an early presidential election while the RN is increasing the pressure.
If the developments of the situation are still unpredictable, these different hypotheses demonstrate the resources still available to the dominant classes to resolve the situation in the direction of their interests. Whether the regime resolves the crisis by toughening its instruments to make workers pay for the crisis or whether it moves closer to the far right by granting Marine Le Pen a new immigration law or other racist concessions, there is urgency for the workers’ movement to seize the crisis and give it a progressive outcome.
Faced with the reactionary outcomes proposed by the ruling classes, it is clear that workers and the popular classes can hope for nothing from the institutions of the Fifth Republic. Faced with austerity, serial layoff plans and the new offensives that Macron or his new government will lead, the working classes must, from tomorrow, confront the regime with a general and political strike, to obtain Macron’s resignation and the end of the Fifth Republic.
