A balancing act. François Bayrou invites political forces, excluding LFI and RN, to Matignon on Thursday, December 19, before announcing his government, a delicate exercise between the demands of the different parties and the Republicans who threaten not to participate.
The Prime Minister invites Thursday at 2:00 p.m. the presidents of the Assembly Yaël Braun-Pivet and of the Senate Gérard Larcher, as well as “the presidents of parties and groups who have had responsibility for the affairs of the country at a period or at a other of the Fifth Republic”. Namely all except La France insoumise – which did not wish to go to Matignon for bilateral talks -, the National Rally and its ally Éric Ciotti’s UDR.
In his letter, François Bayrou invokes, alongside the political and budgetary crisis, the situation in Mayotte, “probably the most serious natural disaster in the history of France for several centuries”, but also New Caledonia, estimating that ” these two situations added together” place political leaders “faced with unprecedented responsibilities”.
Matignon also denied to AFP on Tuesday afternoon that the head of government had given a first list of ministers to the head of state.
François Bayrou continues his delicate exercise of forming a government “of personalities”, after having suffered an intense controversy over his presence Monday evening at the municipal council of Pau, in the midst of the crisis in Mayotte.
In particular, he received on Wednesday in Matignon the leaders of the Radical Party, then Éric Ciotti, and the president of the Macronist senators François Patriat, before the president of the RDSE group in the Upper House, Maryse Carrère.
Threats of censorship
François Bayrou had previously received the resigning Minister of the Interior Bruno Retailleau. The latter had just estimated that the conditions were “not met” for him to remain in government. Speaking on behalf of his party, he explained that LR “will try to see in the coming days whether a certain number of obstacles are removed.” “It would be a shame if the government moved to the left while France is to the right.”
The far right has also made demands. LR President of Hauts-de-France Xavier Bertrand or former Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne in the team is no, for RN MP Laure Lavalette. They “do not embody the break” with Macronism desired by the French, she explained on France Inter.
Beyond that, it was increasingly clearly stated threats of censorship that raised the stakes on Wednesday.
“If François Bayrou does not take into account the errors that Michel Barnier may have made, both in form and in substance, he will also head towards the same consequences, that is to say sooner or later towards censorship”, thus warned the vice-president of the RN Sébastien Chenu.
Blowing hot and cold on the president of MoDem, who maintains cordial relations with Marine Le Pen, the frontist party is starting to raise its voice on the preparation of the budget.
Because, if Parliament has definitively adopted a “special law” to authorize the executive to levy taxes and borrow to finance the State and Social Security, this will not spare the government from working on the urgently to provide France with a budget for 2025.
When will there be a government?
The far right is not the only one to put pressure on Matignon.
François Bayrou, “day after day, hour after hour, is writing the story of his own censorship”, thus estimated the boss of the Ecologists, Marine Tondelier, for whom “failed entries cannot be made up for not”.
“If he comes to offer us the same budget that Mr. Barnier proposed, that is to say we just change the people, but we have the same, the same budgets, the same difficulties for the French, we will censor this budget “there”, insisted the communist Fabien Roussel, whose group plans to vote for censorship as soon as the general policy declaration is made on January 14.
More moderate, Johanna Rolland, first deputy secretary of the PS, called for “interlocutors, men and women who sit around the table and who tell us the path to compromise, to move towards non-censorship, which can be posed.
In the middle of each of these obstacles another unknown arises: when will François Bayrou be able to present his government?
A new meeting at the Élysée took place on Wednesday afternoon between the two heads of the executive. Previously, François Bayrou received his predecessor Gabriel Attal, now head of the Macronist deputies.
In any case, there will be no government announcement a priori before Sunday, the President of the Republic will be traveling to Brussels (European Council) on Wednesday, then to Mayotte on Thursday and finally to French troops in Djibouti until his return to France on Sunday morning.
With AFP
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