Marine Le Pen’s far-right kept French conservative Prime Minister Michel Barnier afloat in the first motion of censure her government faced in the National Assembly on Tuesday.
The initiative, presented last Friday by the left-wing coalition of the New Popular Front (NFP), was debated and voted on in the lower house of Parliament, but had no chance of succeeding, since the National Rally (RN) The far right had announced that he would not vote for it, which he ultimately did.
The motion received the support of 197 deputies out of the 289 required, which constitutes the absolute majority. The 193 NFP deputies needed the support of the 142 parliamentarians from the Le Pen party and its allies. The sum of the left and the extreme right would lead to an automatic cessation of the government, given that the parties which compose it, that is to say the macronist and conservative bloc of Los Republicanos (LR) – Barnier’s formation –, barely compose. about 210 of the 589 deputies.
The French left justified the procedure by the “democratic deficit” in which, in the eyes of the New Popular Front, the executive is based. “You are the government of a destroyed party, supported by another party beaten three times in a month and which is maintained thanks to the extreme right rejected by two thirds of the French,” declared socialist leader Olivier Faure. , responsible for presenting the motion of censure. In his response, Barnier disfigured the left which wants to censor its executive”a priori”, before starting to act and declared that, although without an absolute majority, it is the group that has the most support among the Macronists and the traditional right.
The far right, to whom President Emmanuel Macron gave the key to Barnier’s continuity, had already declared that it did not for the moment intend to overthrow the executive – including the Minister of Interior, Bruno Retailleau, is very close to his theses on immigration. “We chose not to fall into chaos, not to immediately censor Michel Barnier to give him the opportunity to develop a project. If it does not suit us, we will censor,” Sébastien Chenu, of the National Group, declared on Monday. This Tuesday, the RN deputy, Guillaume Bigot, declared; “Our group looks forward to voting for this.” [la moción de censura]but we will not do it today; not with the New Popular Front.”
Olivier Faure himself admitted in an interview that it was “probable” that the motion of censure would fail, assuring that the far right had “decided to support” the Executive without participating in it and considered that the vote was “l opportunity to say who is in opposition and who is not.
A first warning of parliamentary weakness
Even though the government has adopted its first motion of censure, it is a first warning of its parliamentary weakness and its dependence on the far right for its survival. On Sunday, Le Pen told a rally that the Barnier government’s “weak democratic legitimacy” would lead to its downfall and further snap legislative elections, which can legally take place from July 2025, if Macron deems it so. . “We think there will be elections in less than a year,” the far-right politician said.
The one debated this Tuesday is the 35th motion of censure since Macron’s party lost its absolute majority in the 2022 legislative elections, a symptom of the political instability that the country has been experiencing since then. The procedure in France is a relatively simple procedure, since it is not necessary to present an alternative to the Government.
The text proposed by socialist, communist, environmentalist and France Insoumise deputies affirmed that the existence of Barnier’s executive, appointed by Macron a little over a month ago, “is a denial of the result of the last legislative elections “of July 7, against all expectations, the left bloc established itself as the leading parliamentary force.
“With these results, the President of the Republic should have designated for Matignon the person proposed by the New Popular Front, the coalition which holds the greatest number of seats (193) in the National Assembly. It was then up to him to propose a government to the President of the Republic and to try to build majorities text by text”, specifies the text.
With the appointment of Barnier, Macron broke with the tradition of appointing to the post of Prime Minister a figure from the parliamentary majority in the Assembly, hiding behind the announcement of the center and right parties, including his own, that in the event of a motion of censure, they would vote against any figure in the progressive coalition – as proposed by the economist Lucie Castets.
“Ultimately, the President of the Republic preferred to hide behind the so-called ‘institutional stability’ to break with this republican tradition and end up appointing a Prime Minister who is a member of a political group that lost the elections, which which was not the case. not clearly calling for a Republican roadblock. [contra la extrema derecha] and that he is responsible for perpetuating the policy applied for seven years and sanctioned several times by the electorate during elections. The PFN maintains that the institutional stability “so sought after by the President of the Republic is in reality now an opportunistic agreement with the National Group, in absolute contradiction with the immense republican momentum of July 7”.
Last week, Barnier delivered the traditional general policy speech in which he presented the main lines of his government, including the control of immigration. Next Thursday, the Prime Minister will be faced with the presentation of the draft budget for 2025, with which he intends to reduce the French public deficit through spending cuts and more taxes. The socialist leader criticized the government line put forward by Barnier. “The increase for the richest is a smokescreen (…) In reality, the middle classes will pay with price increases and service cuts,” Faure said.
At the same time, we learned on Tuesday that the Macron impeachment procedure promoted by the left-wing France Insoumise party would not be debated in the plenary session of the National Assembly after Le Pen’s abstention from the conference which brings together the leaders of the National Assembly. groups.
