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La Jornada Newspaper
Tuesday, December 3, 2024, p. 24
Paris. The French Prime Minister, Michel Barnier, will face an abrupt end to his mandate after the main opposition parties affirmed yesterday that they will support a motion of no confidence against his government, after only three months in power.
The head of the conservative government yesterday activated a controversial parliamentary procedure to approve part of the budgets without putting it to a vote, certain that the lower house would deny him a majority.
Now it is up to you, the deputies, to decide whether our country is equipped with responsible, essential and useful financial texts for our fellow citizens. Or if we are entering unknown territorydeclared Barnier before the National Assembly.
The premier made the decision despite the fact that the left and the extreme right threatened with a motion of censure if he used that tool.
Following Barnier’s announcement, France Insoumise (LFI, radical left) announced that it was presenting a motion of censure.
The premier will face both disgrace and censure this Wednesdaysaid Mathilde Panot, the party’s parliamentary leader.
National Rally (RN, far right), the party with the most deputies in Parliament, indicated that it will support a left-wing motion and present one of its own.
R.N. will vote censure of the Barnier government, appointed in September by French President Emmanuel Macron, the group indicated on the social network X.
The adoption of a motion of censure in France requires the votes of at least 288 deputies.
If the extreme right and the entire left vote in favor, the center-right minority government will fall. A vote is scheduled for tomorrow.
The second economy of the European Union is in a political crisis since Macron decided in June to bring forward the legislative elections scheduled for 2027, which generated a chamber without clear majorities.
In recent days, Barnier has multiplied his concessions to the extreme right, on which the government’s survival depends, to prevent his deputies from supporting a motion of censure from the left during the approval process of the 2025 budget.
But Marine Le Pen, leader of the far right, indicated that her deputies will vote in favor of all the motions, where they come from.
If the government falls, it will be the first motion of censure to succeed since the defeat of Georges Pompidou’s Executive in 1962, when Charles de Gaulle was president (1959-69).
Barnier’s government would also be the shortest of the fifth French Republic, which was born in 1958.
