The “smoke” that came out on Thursday afternoon from the presidential Palace of the Elysees in Paris is not only white: France got a prime minister, after 60 days, the right Michel Barnierformer commissioner and former minister of right-wing governments (of presidents Chirac and Sarkozy), but the formation of a government under Barnier, with the aim of returning to normality, is far from a given.
Towards a coalition government
After endless consultations, a result of the political deadlock caused by the early parliamentary elections of July 7, which did not give any party autonomy, the French president Emmanuel Macron appointed the right-wing Barnier as prime minister to forcefully form a coalition government, aiming to secure a majority of 289 seats out of 577 in the National Assembly. However, the question that was raised was with whom the new prime minister would seek to form a government. With the 166 MPs of the centrist Ensemble coalition under Macron and the 193 MPs of the left-wing New People’s Front (NFP) coalition, which emerged as the first force in the election?
Or would he prefer the solution of a government with a core of the Center, the support of the Right (LR) which elected only 47 MPs and the tolerance of the far-right National Rally (RN) of Marine Le Pen, which, in cooperation with disaffected right-wingers, elected 142 deputies?
Waiting stop from Le Pen
The National Rally has announced that it will wait for Barnier’s government announcements to decide what stance it will take. According to Le Pen, Barnier “they meet at least the first criterion we set, which is the respect of all political forces and the fact that it can address the deputies of the National Rally, which is the first party in the National Assembly, in the same way as it addresses the other parties. We await his political speech and his positions on the budget issue.”
Although marginalized after the elections, Le Pen’s party has become, as “Monde” noted, a regulator in the matter of appointing a prime minister: Marine Le Pen rejected both Bernard Cazeneuve, former prime minister of the Socialists, as well as the center-right Xavier Bertrand, for whom she has a long-standing dislike because he despises her party.
The French Left appeared to argue that it was not possible to elect a prime minister from a party that came fourth in the election with 5.4% and elected just 47 MPs. The socialist ex-president Francois Hollande, who was elected MP of the Socialists, harshly criticized Macron for turning a blind eye to the Far Right.
THE Jean-Luc Mélenchon, head of the far-left Insubordinate France, a component of the New Popular Front, took his voters to the streets of France in a sign of protest against the choice of prime minister of Macron, who despises the election result. The union of French students (UNEF) also responded to Mélenchon’s appeal.
In the handing over of the prime ministership ceremony by the outgoing prime minister Gabriel Atal, Barnier made the French’s access to public services (health, etc.), strengthening citizens’ sense of security and immigration control his government’s priorities.
The always conservative Barnier
Barnier, 73, is the oldest politician to become prime minister in France since 1958. He is highly regarded in Brussels as he led the difficult Brexit negotiations on behalf of the EU. In the EU he gained a reputation as a consensus politician, who tried to bring together the views of 27 member states. The truth, however, is a little more complex: three years ago Barnier, in the context of claiming the anointing of the Republican party (the right-wing, Gaulish party) in view of the French presidential elections of 2022, had adopted hard positions on immigration, reaching to the point of declaring that Community law cannot prevail over national law in this particular matter and that member countries are constantly at risk of being condemned by the Court of Justice of the European Union. Always a conservative, Barnier, aged 30, as a young French Right-wing MP, had voted against the decriminalization of homosexuality in 1981, during the Socialist presidency Francois Mitterrand.
Motion of censure from the left NFP
Unanimously, the left-wing NFP of the four components announced that it would submit a motion of censure against the Barnier government.
In order to submit a motion of censure, the support of 58 MPs is required. Both the NFP and Akrodexia have the required number of MPs to submit it. However, for the motion of censure to be adopted, 289 votes are required out of a total of 577. In this case, the French Left and the French Far Right will have to vote with the same idea: the fall of the government. But will the French Left agree to vote on the same motion of censure as the Far Right? Not at all certain, notes “Monde”, and recalls that in the history of the French Fifth Republic (from 1958 to the present) only one motion of censure has had an effect, that of October 5, 1962, which caused the fall of the government of the then prime minister George Pompidou.
A possible motion of censure should be filed when the National Assembly begins its work on October 1, however the president of the body, Yael Bron-Pivet, already sent a letter to Macron asking for an emergency meeting of the National Assembly in September, during which Barnier will develop his government’s policy positions. This will be followed by the announcement of the composition of the government, a power which, according to article 8 of the French constitution, is vested in the President of the Republic, “after the recommendation of the prime minister”. And this undertaking is also difficult, as politicians with the greatest possible acceptance are sought.
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