Michel Barnier, the new Prime Minister of France, knows well that certain objectives become feasible only with the passage of time and the fatigue of his interlocutors. This was the case with the Brexit negotiations, which established him as a man of dialogue and consensus, and allowed him to return home with something resembling a victory. And that is exactly what he hopes will happen again with the complicated mission of forming a government that encompasses all political sensitivities and manages to reduce the decisive influence of the far right in order to avoid a vote of no confidence at the first opportunity. For the moment, the left has no intention of collaborating with the conservative prime minister appointed by Emmanuel Macron last Thursday. Figures of enormous weight, such as the former socialist president François Hollande, have already announced that they would veto his government.
The idea in Matignon remains the same as that which Macron failed to achieve after the elections: to break the alliance of the New Popular Front (NFP) and succeed in attracting some of its members to the bloc of the new Executive. Hope is focused on the Socialist Party (PS), but on Tuesday its leaders, Olivier Faure and Boris Vallaud, again closed the door to the slightest concession. They also declined any meeting with Barnier before he presents his general policy declaration to the National Assembly, according to a report. The WorldIt is true that Faure represents the hardest wing of the Socialists, but the chances now seem slim.
Barnier will be looking for any crack in the NFP wall. And the leaders of the Communist Party (CP), for their part, will be received by the Prime Minister next Tuesday. The national secretary of the party, Fabien Roussel, was not too optimistic either and said he was going to the meeting “without illusions” about the new head of government, “who has been in politics for 50 years and has never done anything social in our country.” In addition, Roussel confirmed his intention to vote for a no confidence in Barnier’s government.
The third and most important wing of the NFP, La France Insoumise (LFI), has not yet received an invitation to go to Matignon, said the national coordinator, Manuel Bompard, on Tuesday. At this stage, it does not seem likely that the opposite will happen. But if it does receive an invitation, he said, it would not go to meet the prime minister either. He also confirmed that the left would present a motion of censure without waiting, from the start of the parliamentary session at the beginning of October, if there is not an extraordinary session in September.
The Greens also said they had not yet received an invitation to meet the Prime Minister. “Barnier has nothing to expect from us and we have nothing to expect from him,” stressed one of the Green MPs’ spokespersons, Benjamin Lucas, at a press conference in the National Assembly. “We will do everything possible to overthrow this government, to censure it,” added the MP, stressing that the Left was “in a position” to achieve this.
The game is now completely open. And not even the deputies of Ensemble por la République, Macron’s liberal party, have wanted to give the newly elected prime minister a blank check. The situation is somewhat strange, not only because Barnier was chosen by the President of the Republic, but because the person who must now decide the degree of collaboration he establishes with the new head of the Executive is none other than his predecessor in Matignon, Gabriel Attal, with whom sparks already flew on the day of the changeover. Many of the party’s long-standing members of the progressive wing of Ensemble have felt betrayed by Macron’s shift to the right in choosing Barnier.
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One of the key issues for this formation, however, will be how many portfolios it will reserve for them and whether some of the outgoing ministers will repeat in office, something that has angered the other political forces, who have already warned that this would mean contravening the will of the French people following the legislative elections last July, in which the left-wing bloc came in first place, followed by Macron’s centrists and, in third place, Le Pen’s ultras.
One of those ministers, the Minister of the Economy, Bruno Le Maire, had lunch yesterday with Barnier to discuss one of the most urgent matters that the head of the Executive will have to deal with: the clean-up of public accounts. The French public deficit, which in 2023 rose to 5.5% of GDP – which led the European Commission to open an excessive deficit file – now runs the risk of worsening to 5.6% this year and even 6.2% in 2025 if urgent measures are not taken. “It is the most urgent challenge, it is the most difficult challenge, it is the most political challenge,” Le Maire had warned the deputies of the Finance Committee the day before. “It is the challenge on which everything depends, because nothing is possible without well-managed public finances.”
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