“I have confidence in my allies”: four days before the presentation of the 2025 budget, Prime Minister Michel Barnier recognizes that he will “need everyone” and pays tribute to his predecessor Gabriel Attal, now head of the first group of its very relative majority. The peace of the brave before the mother of battles.
“The debt that I found is not only that of my immediate predecessors” but “the fruit of twenty years of neglect”, he underlines in an interview with La Tribune Dimanche, where he credits Gabriel Attal to have “started to reduce public spending and to make efforts”. A gesture of appeasement after the tensions that have emerged in recent weeks between the two men, notably in disagreement over the tax increases envisaged by the new tenant of Matignon.
“I have a lot of respect for Gabriel Attal. He is a high quality elected official who has a future. I hear clearly what is being said, but there is no difficulty between us, even if we have a different temperament and style,” assures Michel Barnier, who does not forget that his younger brother leads a contingent of 95 deputies .
Unpopular measures
“He is at the head of an important parliamentary group. I need him,” he admits. More broadly, “the government needs everyone,” he adds, citing “in particular” the tenors of the center and the right Laurent Wauquiez, François Bayrou and Édouard Philippe.
Support expected to defend unpopular measures, such as the postponement of the increase in pensions from January 1 to July 1, which must reduce spending “by 4 billion euros” – unless parliamentarians “find equivalent savings” elsewhere, according to the Prime Minister.
The same goes for reductions in business contributions, which Michel Barnier intends to “review”, taking the opportunity to “withdraw” four billion in aid along the way. Other avenues are outlined in the social sphere, such as “the cost of work stoppages” or the “windfall effects” of apprenticeship, without quantified objectives at this stage.
The State will also be called upon to contribute and “we will ask all ministers to make an effort”, affirms the head of government. Including Defense, Justice or Research, although covered by programming laws but which “will have to provide their share of efforts, in particular through redeployment”.
Furthermore, in terms of immigration, the Prime Minister wishes to “use all means” to facilitate expulsions, “including the renegotiation of bilateral treaties, to improve dialogue with Morocco, Algeria, Senegal and other countries”. A subject which falls under a diplomatic competence shared with Emmanuel Macron. “I will talk about it with the Head of State so that we can find the best solutions,” says Barnier.
The tenant of Matignon also announced that he would go to New Caledonia “when the time comes”, hoping to find a “path of appeasement” thanks to the measures provided for in his general policy declaration. These two measures are “the postponement of the elections which were planned and the non-referral to Congress to ratify the initially planned thaw of the electoral body”, he recalled.
“We will take the time, at least a year, to discuss it again and find a new balance. We can rebuild a dialogue between all communities,” he said, recalling that the President of the National Assembly Yaël Braun-Pivet and her Senate counterpart Gérard Larcher would carry out a good offices mission in the archipelago. “I will go to New Caledonia myself when the time comes because I think it is the responsibility of a Prime Minister,” he added.
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