Did Michel Barnier save his skin this Monday, November 25? “Nothing is less certain,” said Marine Le Pen at the end of her hour-long interview with Michel Barnier in Matignon.
The Prime Minister is playing for his political survival while the president of the National Rally deputies threatens to censure his government over the budget in mid-December.
“It will be censorship”
The head of government “seemed to me at the same time courteous and firm in his positions,” lamented the former presidential candidate, ensuring that he had “repeated the red lines of the RN.”
“As things stand” and the modification of the state budget in the coming weeks, “we have always said, it will be censorship,” judged the Pas-de-Calais deputy.
In the absence of an absolute majority in the National Assembly, the Prime Minister has already warned that he would “probably” use the institutional cartridge of 49.3, the article of the Constitution that allows the adoption of a text without a vote.
A probable Barnier reversal
But this maneuver also allows the opposition to present a motion of censure at the same time. If he gets at least 289 votes, Michel Barnier and his government will be overthrown.
If the votes of the RN are added to those of the left, its political future will be paralyzed in its tracks. Only the new popular front and Marine Le Pen’s deputies have 320 votes, more than enough to overthrow the current government.
Suffice it to say that Michel Barnier has every interest in convincing the extreme right not to support this motion of censure. Among the red lines marked by the RN, we find in particular the refusal to increase taxes on electricity and the fact that all retirees will not see their pension fully revalued by inflation, as the Pas-de-Calais deputy explained in RTL last week.
“We will see if today’s statements are successful”
Marine Le Pen repeated this morning “for the umpteenth time the RN’s red lines”, evidently without convincing the Prime Minister to let him go.
“We will see if today’s statements advance, but nothing is less certain,” said the former head of the party.
Pending the possible overthrow of his government, Michel Barnier tries to trivialize the situation. This “coalition of opposites,” “I know is not what the French want, who today want stability, serenity,” the Matignon tenant launched on Thursday from the Congress of Mayors.
The threat of a “Greek-style scenario”
To get out of the routine, the government is betting on two cards. First he hopes to convince the socialists not to vote in favor of the motion of censure. Without their support it would be impossible to overthrow Michel Barnier.
The Prime Minister also has the specter of a “Greek-style scenario”, described this Sunday by spokesperson Maud Bregeon in the columns of Le Parisien.
Enough to convince then that the situation that Athens faced in the midst of the 2008 public debt crisis was very different? The content of the interviews in Matignon that will continue in the coming days should set the tone.
Source: BFM TV
