Europe’s second economy is sinking into a political crisis // Radical left legislator demands the president’s resignation
▲ French President Emmanuel Macron visited the archaeological site of Hegra yesterday, during his official visit to Saudi Arabia.Photo Afp
Afp
La Jornada Newspaper
Thursday, December 5, 2024, p. 24
Paris. Yesterday, left-wing and far-right deputies approved a motion of censure in the government of French Prime Minister Michel Barnier, amid calls for the resignation of President Emmanuel Macron, which plunges the second largest economy in the European Union into a political crisis.
Barnier will present his resignation to the head of state at the Elysée Palace today.
With 331 votes in favor, above the absolute majority of 288, the National Assembly (Lower House) ended less than 100 days of Barnier’s government, who rejected the budget for 2025.
The censorship does not directly affect the 46-year-old center-right president, whose term ends in 2027, but it weakens him, especially when in September he decided to appoint Barnier in the name of stability.
To get out of the impasse into which the president has put the country, there is only one solution: we now ask Macron to leavedeclared deputy Mathilde Panot, from the radical left party La Francia Insumisa (LFI).
Without directly asking for his resignation, the leader of the far-right National Rally party (RN), Marine Le Pen, called on Macron, with whom he competed for the presidency in 2017 and 2022, to think about whether he can continue in office.
It is up to his conscience to decide whether he can sacrifice public action and the destiny of France to his pride. It is up to your reason to decide whether you can ignore the evidence of massive popular rejectionhe stressed during the debate in the Assembly.
The president, who from Riyadh had described as politics fiction the idea of resigning before the end of his second term, will address the country in a televised speech tonight, his office announced.
Le Pen appears in a strong position in the polls to win the presidency, but justice could frustrate her ambition if on March 31 it decides to disqualify her for five years, as requested by the prosecution in a case of embezzlement of European funds.
The success of the motion of censure made Barnier’s government the shortest of the French Fifth Republic, which began in 1958, and the second to fall, after that of Georges Pompidou in 1962, when Charles de Gaulle was president.
Without being able to call new legislative elections until July or run for re-election in 2027, the president seems willing to name a new prime minister. quicklyeven before the Notre Dame reopening ceremonies scheduled for the weekend, according to his interlocutors.
But nothing has been decided yetnoted Macron’s entourage, who took two months to appoint Barnier, whose conservative party The Republicans (LR) abandoned the opposition to govern alongside his centrist alliance in power since 2017.
In a National Assembly without clear majorities and divided since July into three irreconcilable blocks – left, center-right and extreme right – the game now seems more open.
Socialists and environmentalists, members of the New Popular Front, a coalition of parties, and progressive and left-wing organizations, opened the door to agreements with Macron’s alliance, but former center-right Prime Minister Gabriel Attal called on the former to break free before their LFI allies.
Le Pen assured that she will leave work to the next head of government, whom he urged to build together with his far-right party and the Assembly a budget acceptable to all.
Barnier’s refusal to renounce the delay from January to July of the revaluation of pensions in his 2025 budget project motivated the extreme right to finally advocate censuring him, despite achieving several concessions.
With a budget focused on reducing public spending and temporarily increasing taxes for large companies, the government sought to reduce the deficit (projected at 6.1 percent of GDP in 2024) and public debt (112 percent of GDP at the end of June). .
This motion of censure aggravates everything and makes it more difficultwarned Barnier at the end of the debate, who had appealed to responsibility in a tense economic moment with the risk premium on French debt at levels similar to that of Greece.
The social climate is also complicated. A strike by public officials is planned today, while the mobilization of farmers against a trade agreement between the European Union and Mercosur continues.
The instability in France and the government crisis in Germany, which led to the legislative elections being brought forward to February 23, could also hamper the European Union, when Donald Trump prepares to return to power in the United States.