France | Bayrou government takes office, already under threat of censorship

(Paris) The ministers of the new French government take office on Tuesday, on the eve of Christmas, but the Socialist Party has already not ruled out quickly censoring it in the name of too great a “dependence” on the goodwill of the extreme RIGHT.

“I am convinced that the action that I define before you and the government team will ensure that we will not be censored,” declared the 73-year-old centrist leader on Monday evening, a few hours after the presentation of his government.

He is the fourth prime minister in 2024. His predecessor lasted three months, an instability not seen in France for decades.

“None of the conditions of the non-censorship pact have been respected” in the composition of the new government, nevertheless replied Tuesday the leader of the PS Olivier Faure, “there is no reason to grant anything to this government.”

He specified that his group could vote for censure as soon as the Prime Minister's general policy declaration is made on January 14. The first Council of Ministers is planned after the holidays, on January 3, around President Emmanuel Macron.

The two former prime ministers Elisabeth Borne, appointed to Education, and Manuel Valls, to Overseas Territories, are particularly scrutinized, as is another returnee, Gérald Darmanin, who will occupy the Justice portfolio.

“I will not pretend this morning that I had planned for a long time to find myself in front of you,” admitted M^me Borne who left the post of prime minister at the start of the year.

“I am lucid. I am the sixth minister to be appointed in a little over two and a half years and I appreciate the difficulties and expectations of the educational community and the academic and research world,” she further underlined, emphasizing the importance of “putting a stop to the rise of incivility, insults, even violence in our establishments” and “attacks on secularism in our schools”.

The new Minister of the Economy Eric Lombard took office Monday evening and was received on Tuesday morning in Matignon. Former director of the public financial institution Caisse des Dépôts et Consignations, presented by François Bayrou as a man of the left, he immediately called for “treating our endemic evil, the deficit”.

This will be the first challenge for the Bayrou team: passing a budget for 2025 to the National Assembly, which on December 4 overthrew its predecessor Michel Barnier.

The new prime minister believes that the presence of heavyweights in his team protects him, for lack of having opened his government further to the left.

He expects, after his general policy declaration, that a motion of censure will be tabled, as France Insoumise (LFI, radical left) intends to do.

The National Rally (far right), the largest group in the Assembly, has indicated that it will not censor the new government a priori.

The rumor, denied by Mr. Bayrou, is of a telephone exchange between the Prime Minister and Marine Le Pen in the final adjustments to the composition of the government.

In fact, the socialist Olivier Faure condemned on Monday an “extreme right” government in the form of “provocation”. And the next day denounced a prime minister who “drifted”.

Marine Le Pen, for her part, assured Tuesday in a video message that the French would be led “soon, very soon, at worst in a few months” to choose “a new path”.

And the president of his party Jordan Bardella did not mince his words against the government list: “Luckily ridicule does not kill”, because “François Bayrou has brought together the coalition of failure”.

For La France insoumise, Mathilde Panot criticized a team full of “people disowned at the polls and who contributed to sinking our country”.

On the side of the Republicans (LR), who remain in government, Laurent Wauquiez spoke of “very demanding” support for François Bayrou which could be “withdrawn” depending on the course set.

The government team has 35 members, is less numerous than that of Michel Barnier (42), but less tight than envisaged, and almost equal with 18 women and 17 men. And marked by a certain continuity with 19 ministers who are retained.