The French government’s days are numbered. As predicted, Michel Barnier resorted to using Article 49.3 of the Constitution to force through its budget, and is now the target of a motion of no confidence designed to overturn his government. After the budget decision on the afternoon of Monday, December 2nd, MPs must now debate and vote on it by Thursday, December 5th.
With this deadline looming, some are calling for Macron to resign as a way out of the political crisis opened up by his dissolution of the National Assembly last June. It couldn’t have been easy: by telling MPs of his intention to use Article 49.3, Michel Barnier knew he was signing his own political death warrant. The institutional machinery had been set in motion.
In response, the Rassemblement National (RN) and the left-wing coalition have each proposed a motion of censure designed to prevent the forced adoption of the budget, and at the same time bring down the government. While the RN will be the only party to vote in favour of its own motion, the left-wing motion is expected to pass, with the combined votes of left-wing MPs, the RN and its allies.
A motion of censure already occurred on the watch of the previous prime minister, Élisabeth Borne. But a few months ago, the addition of the votes of the Left and the RN was not enough to obtain a majority in favour of the overthrow. This summer’s legislative elections changed all that.
This looks like the second time under the Fifth Republic that a motion of censure has succeeded: you have to go back to 1962, the time of President de Gaulle and Georges Pompidou, to see such a motion succeed. Back then, de Gaulle chose to dissolve the National Assembly in response to the censure of his prime minister. This time, Macron does not have that option, because the dissolution took place already in June, and the constitution provides for a period of one year before another dissolution can take place.
Right until the end, the Prime Minister tried to ward off his fate, making numerous direct telephone calls to Marine Le Pen—and numerous concessions to the RN:
- abandoning the increase in electricity tax;
- abandoning the delisting of certain medicines;
- announcing the introduction of proportional representation in the coming months.
None of this was enough. One sticking point remains: the question of de-indexing pensions from inflation, a measure sought by Barnier and criticised by Le Pen, who is seeking to protect the purchasing power of the most modest pensioners. It’s a symbolic measure for Le Pen, who is keen to defend her ‘social’ image. On this issue, Barnier did not give in, and thus definitively tipped the RN into the camp of censure.
The situation is critical for the Prime Minister. He is going to be censured and is now the target of attacks from his own camp for having ‘done too much’ to appease the RN. Macronist MPs have not digested the fact that he went so far as to promise a cut in state medical aid, admitting publicly that this was a request from Marine Le Pen. A Macronist senator warned Le Figaro, “What the RN has obtained, no one has obtained before them.”
The Macronist camp, in association with Les Républicains, is now criticising Marine Le Pen for being ‘irresponsible’ for wanting censure at all costs, since she knew that her requests could not all be honoured. They criticise the ‘unnatural’ alliance of the Left and the RN on the same motion, when everything should separate them. Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau accused Marine Le Pen of playing with the institutions and wanting chaos, knowing she is to be condemned legally in the trial of her European parliamentary assistants.
Amid the ruins, the RN’s target is now obvious: Emmanuel Macron. At a time when the prospects of forming a new government are less than clear—where to look for a new Prime Minister capable of achieving consensus after the failure of Barnier, who was already so hard to find?—blame for the crisis is being shifted to the President of the Republic. The RN wants the question of Macron’s resignation to be raised and is joined in this by various political figures from the Left and centre-right.
“The only way out is for us to have a presidential election as soon as possible,” admits Hervé Morin, president of a small centrist party belonging to the presidential camp. “At some point, his friends or those who like him are going to have to tell him that he can’t last until 2027,” said Jean-François Copé, a long-standing member of Les Républicains.
Emmanuel Macron, for his part, is currently on a trip to Saudi Arabia and has not the slightest intention of resigning, but he will be in a lot of trouble at the end of the week when faced with the task of forming a new government. The coming weeks promise a very high level of political tension in France.
