France: the Barnier government on the brink of the abyss

The French government is, barring any surprises, living its last days, with the far right and left having announced on Monday that they would vote for censure on budgetary issues, which should precipitate the fall of the executive in a France plunged for months into the political chaos.

We will vote to censure the governmentsaid the figurehead of the far right Marine Le Pen.

The votes of his party, the National Rally (RN), and those of the left-wing alliance New Popular Front (NFP) are enough to bring down the fragile center-right government lacking a majority in the National Assembly.

The NFP filed a motion of censure in the evening. The group RN has already made it known that he would vote for it, but also that he was tabling his own motion of censure.

In the afternoon, Prime Minister Michel Barnier held his government responsible for having his Social Security financing bill adopted without a vote, invoking article 49.3 of the Constitution.

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 political groups.

Into unknown territory

We have now reached a moment of truth which confronts everyone with their responsibilitieshe said, warning parties against the possibility that the country would enter in unknown territory.

A few moments later, the radical left left the chamber and announced the tabling of a motion of censure, imitated by the far right. 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 lower reimbursement for medicines…

Monday, shortly before the opening of the session in the Assembly, the RN posed a new condition by demanding action on pensions so as not to censor the government.

A first since the fall of the Pompidou 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. (since 1958).

France continues to sink into the political crisis triggered by the dissolution of the National Assembly decided by President 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. Immediately after Michel Barnier held the government responsible, the gap between the borrowing interest rates of France and Germany increased sharply on the markets.

The difference between these two rates, called spreadand barometer of investor confidence in France’s signature, stood at 0.88 percentage points, a level comparable to 2012.

Without the social security financing bill that we are examining today, the deficit in social accounts would reach nearly 30 billion euros. [44,2 milliards de dollars canadiens] next year said Budget Minister Laurent Saint-Martin in the chamber.

The president of the Macronist group in the Assembly, Gabriel Attal, had previously called the oppositions not to give in to the temptation of the worst and therefore not to vote for censure of the government.

This motion of censure is not an end in itself, nor is it a tool aimed at destabilizationassured the elected socialists in a press release, calling on the head of state to appoint a left-wing prime minister.

With their backs to the wall, the heads of the parliamentary groups making up the government base in the Assembly and the Senate issued a final warning in the evening. Voting a motion of censure would amount to plunging the country into the unknownthey said in a joint statement, pleading for stability and calm.

In this deleterious climate, the French are mainly concerned about purchasing power and 87% judge their country in declineaccording to an annual Ipsos-Sopra Steria survey published Monday.

According to this opinion survey, almost a third of French people (31%) want a new dissolution of the National Assembly while 52% of them are in favor of the resignation of Emmanuel Macron.

The French presidency made no comment on the new political situation as Emmanuel Macron landed in Riyadh for a three-day state visit to Saudi Arabia.