The French government is, barring any surprises, living its last days, with the far right having announced on Monday that it would vote for censure on budgetary issues, which, with the votes of the left, should precipitate the fall of the executive in a plunged France. already for months in political chaos.
“We will vote for censorship of the government,” said far-right figurehead Marine Le Pen. The votes of the National Rally (RN) and those of the left alliance, which also tabled a motion of censure, are sufficient to bring down the center-right government lacking a majority in the Assembly.
Shortly before, Prime Minister Michel Barnier had held his government responsible for having the Social Security financing bill adopted without a vote.
In front of a heated hemicycle, Mr. Barnier, engaged for several days in laborious negotiations, said he had been “at the end of the dialogue with all the political groups”.
The triggering of article 49-3 allowing the adoption of the text without a vote caused the departure of deputies from the radical left.
“We are at a moment of truth which confronts everyone with their responsibilities,” he said. “I think the French would not forgive us for preferring particular interests to the future of the nation,” he added.
A few moments later, the radical left announced the tabling of a motion of censure, then the extreme right did the same, while specifying that it would also vote for the left’s motion. The text will be examined on Wednesday at the earliest.
The Barnier government should therefore fall, despite the concessions it has made in recent days to the far right, the referee of the game: no increase in taxes on electricity, reduced state medical aid for foreigners, renunciation to less reimbursement for medicines… Monday, shortly before the opening of the session in the Assembly, the RN set a new condition by demanding action on pensions so as not to censor the government.
The adoption of a motion of censure would be a first since the fall of Georges Pompidou’s government in 1962. The Barnier government, formed in September after long and painful negotiations, would then become the shortest in the history of the Fifth Republic. .
France continues to sink into the political crisis triggered by the dissolution of the National Assembly decided by Emmanuel Macron in June, which led to a hemicycle fragmented into three blocs, none with an absolute majority.
The country faces an abysmal debt and the risk of a financial crisis.
“Without the social security financing bill that we are examining today, the deficit in social accounts would reach nearly 30 billion euros next year,” the Minister of the Budget warned in the chamber. Laurent Saint-Martin.
The president of the Macronist group in the Assembly Gabriel Attal had previously called on the oppositions “not to give in to the temptation of the worst and therefore not to vote for censure of the government”.
In this deleterious climate, the French are mainly concerned about purchasing power and 87% consider their country “in decline”, according to an annual Ipsos-Sopra Steria survey published Monday.
Asked about the issues that concern them the most “on a personal basis”, the French place “difficulties in terms of purchasing power” at the top (38%), ahead of “protection of the environment” (23%) and “the level of delinquency” (22%), according to this survey on “French fractures”.
According to this opinion survey, nearly a third of French people (31%) want a new dissolution of the National Assembly after that decided on June 9, while 52% of them are in favor of the resignation of ‘Emmanuel Macron.
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