Barnier’s government has not yet taken office, but it is already causing tensions within the presidential coalition. While the general architecture of the executive, presented on Thursday 19 September by the Prime Minister during a meeting with party leaders in Matignon, is not disputed, the names rumoured since then, announcing a government strongly inclined to the right, caused a stir on Friday among the allies of the former majority.
The presence of Bruno Retailleau, a figure of the conservative right, a former protégé of Philippe de Villiers, who has reportedly been offered the Ministry of the Interior, particularly irritates the Macronists. The president of the Les Républicains (LR) group in the Senate represents “the hardest right”underlines Renaissance MP Ludovic Mendès. “We can work with right-wing people”says the MEP for Moselle, a former Socialist Party member, citing as examples the names of Annie Genevard (LR MP, expected to become Minister of Agriculture), Julien Dive (LR MP close to Xavier Bertrand) or Philippe Juvin (LR MP for Hauts-de-Seine), “but with Retailleau, who speaks of “French paper”, This is not possible. Furthermore, it is not with this type of profile that we will attract people from the left to the government. “.
In fact, on the left, only the former socialist president of the National Assembly’s finance committee, Didier Migaud, president of the High Authority for Transparency in Public Life (HATVP), is said to have accepted Michel Barnier’s advances.
Laurence Garnier, a “provocation”
Another profile judged “divider” In the presidential camp, there was the LR senator Laurence Garnier, close to Bruno Retailleau, who was opposed to gay marriage or the constitutionalization of abortion. While she was being considered for the family portfolio, her name caused a stir on the left and in part of the presidential camp, which denounced a “provocation”.
Alerted by several Macronist leaders, Emmanuel Macron, who according to a relative did not know the person chosen from Nantes, in turn drew the attention of the Prime Minister to the “delicate profile” from the opposition leader to the socialist mayor Johanna Rolland. The senator should be moved to another post.. A process contested by the Republican right. “If we go down that path, we can also get people out of their homes.” an LR executive gets angry.
In this tense context, Loire-Atlantique MP Sophie Errante, one of the first socialist MPs to join Emmanuel Macron in 2017, announced on Friday her departure from the Ensemble pour la République (EPR) group. “The appointment of Michel Barnier and the composition of the government mark a clear shift to the right”regrets in a press release, and “a profound break with the reasons why I got involved alongside Emmanuel Macron in 2017”. Re-elected on July 7 in a triangular form, the elected party expected the constitution of a “central coalition around Bernard Cazeneuve”She said to World. Disappointed, she resumes her “freedom of speech, tone and vote”and will now be placed among the unregistered.
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