Prime Minister François Bayrou arrived at the Elysée Palace at noon, and left about an hour and a half later to submit his resignation to President Emmanuel Macron, following the fall of his government yesterday at the National Assembly.
Bayrou entered the gates of 55 Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré in his official car shortly before 1:30 PM. Yesterday, the president had "acknowledged" parliamentarians' refusal to grant him a vote of confidence and promised to appoint his successor "in the coming days." For now, Bayrou remains the resigning prime minister to manage current affairs.
Yesterday, nearly 20 votes from the "common core," the members of the majority coalition, were missing. The prime minister was seeking a vote of confidence on his budget proposal, which included €44 billion in cuts, two fewer public holidays, and confirmation of the hated pension reform. A tsunami of "no" votes overwhelmed him, 364 against 194 "yes." And while hundreds of people celebrated the collapse in the streets, now, as Jean-Luc Mélenchon, a tribune of the more radical left, immediately commented, "Macron is on the front lines before the people. And he too must go home."
Throughout the opposition's speeches in Parliament, Macron's name resounded as the true culprit behind the crisis and this new "leap into the unknown" for the country. He has now reached his fourth prime minister in a year and a half, the third since the snap elections (which the majority lost) last July. This is a first for the Fifth Republic, which was born partly chasing the North Star of stability and sixty years later ended up in its exact opposite.
A glimmer of hope for dialogue comes from former prime minister Gabriel Attal, now leader of Macron's Renaissance party. Even before appointing a prime minister, he has asked Macron to appoint a "negotiator" to reach a "general interest agreement" between "the republican forces": a completely new development at this stage in French history is seeking an agreement before even choosing a prime minister. Specifically, the negotiator would not be the future prime minister, but would be charged with bringing together all the leaders of the parties represented in Parliament for a few weeks to find a "compromise on the budget." The future prime minister would then be "the guarantor of this agreement." A technician? According to Attal, this would be a figure from the political or trade union world, a "consensual figure capable of bringing political leaders together around the table with his name." It would be a temporary agreement, which would subsequently give rise to a sort of "government with a specific purpose," whose primary and most urgent mission would be "to reach a budget for 2026."
Marine Le Pen is more than against it: "Absolute nonsense," is the resounding rebuke from the leader of the National Rally. "We're not in a psychological support unit. Either there's a prime minister capable of finding a way to avoid a vote of no confidence when he presents the budget, or this prime minister is incapable of finding a way. In that case, we will obviously bring the issue of dissolution back on the table, because it's the only and best means under our Constitution to emerge from a political crisis that could turn into a regime crisis."
(Unioneonline)
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