The French Government is looking into the abyss again if the left and the extreme right decide to carry out their threat to jointly present and vote on a motion of censure next week. The decision will be made based on the content of the budgets, the opposition announces, and, above all, the method chosen to approve them. If the Prime Minister, Michel Barnier, chooses to use article 49.3 of the Constitution and do so by decree (he himself has said that it is “probable”), the left-wing coalition will present the motion and the National Rally (RN) will vote on it. . The Executive, aware that the threat has become increasingly real in recent hours, seeks in extremisa solution and has started by renouncing the increase in the price of electricity that bothered the extreme right.
The Government is “ready to make measured concessions”, especially with regard to electricity taxation, but warns the opposition about the risk of a “jump into the budget gap” if the accounts are not approved, it announced in the morning. the Minister of Economy and Finance, Antoine Armand. Shortly afterwards, Barnier gave an interview to the newspaper The Figaro ―the preferred channel of the right to send political messages― where he confirmed the transfer. “I have decided not to increase taxes on electricity in the 2025 Finance Bill. This will allow a reduction in electricity prices of 14%, which will go well beyond the 9% drop initially planned.”
The far-right celebrated Barnier’s retreat as the first trophy in the hunt that opened on Monday when Marine Le Pen met with the prime minister and raised her demands to allow him to continue in office. “Barnier backs down in front of the RN deputies and the price of electricity will drop,” celebrated the spokesperson for the RN deputies, Laure Lavalette, on the social network energy,” insisted Jordan Bardella, president of the RN, on the same social network. But the head of the entire operation, Marine Le Pen, continued to press. “It’s not enough. It’s Thursday. “You have until Monday,” he declared to Le Mondemaintaining his threat of the motion of censure.
Barnier, however, in an attempt to mitigate the image of surrender to the extreme right, pointed out that the RN was not the only party to press in this direction. “Whether mostly [parlamentaria] or among the opposition leaders that I have received, almost all of them have asked me to change my position,” he said in the interview with The Figarowhere he tried to temper spirits and send a message of openness to other concessions. The problem will now be to look elsewhere for the 3,000 million that it intended to receive with that measure, part of a savings package of 60,000 million euros that seeks to contain the public deficit, which will increase this year to 6.1%.
Deputy and former Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin praised what he considered a “wise decision” and thanked Barnier for reaching out to the opposition. But the measure will not be enough if the Executive wants to get through this Christmas alive. His fall would once again leave the President of the Republic, Emmanuel Macron, without a shield. In fact, as hostilities increase, voices calling for his resignation to start a new political project from scratch are growing. Barnier, in the interview with Le Figaro, He did not want to give his opinion on this topic.
The prime minister, on the other hand, did announce a significant decrease in public money that covers medical costs for irregular immigrants, as Le Pen requested: “After years of increase, the State Medical Aid (AME), whose cost rises at 1.2 billion euros, is already being subject to stabilization. We are not going to eliminate it, but the ‘basket of services’ covered will be considerably reduced, as proposed by Patrick Stefanini and Claude Évin in a recent report. Furthermore, next year we will undertake a reform of the AME to avoid abuses and misuses,” he noted, without mentioning that the demand of Le Pen’s party is based on eliminating this aid to irregular immigrants.
