Marine Le Pen will finally have pressed the red button. The leader of the RN announced this Monday that her group in the National Assembly will vote to censure the government of Michel Barnier following the activation of article 49.3 on the Social Security budget by the Prime Minister . “Mr Barnier did not wish to respond to the request of the eleven million voters of the National Rally, he said that everyone would assume their responsibilities. We will therefore assume ours”, justified the three-time candidate in the presidential election before the press this Monday.
This decision, which should in principle condemn the Prime Minister only three months after his arrival at Matignon, will nevertheless have been the result of numerous prevarications and reversals within the party in the flame. And this, since the election of its 141 deputies (including 16 elected around Eric Ciotti) in the last legislative elections. At the beginning of last October, the day after the appointment of the former Brexit negotiator at Matignon, the RN refused to vote on the motion of censure tabled by the New Popular Front. Thus playing its self-proclaimed role of “constructive” opposition, and ensuring that it does not want to “censor for the sake of censoring” a government before it has been able to defend its texts.
Conditions that have evolved
The RN was particularly waiting for the budget review to put all its weight behind the Barnier government, with the threat of censorship as a sword of Damocles over the Prime Minister. Marine Le Pen will have continued to repeat her numerous “red lines” in recent weeks, which would make RN deputies vote for the fall of the government. Obtaining numerous victories with the Prime Minister, in particular the renunciation of the increase in the increase in taxes on electricity, but also a reduction in State Medical Aid (AME) for undocumented people .
But these political victories were very quickly followed by new demands. In an interview this Sunday at The TribuneMarine Le Pen affirmed that “censorship is not inevitable”, provided that “Michel Barnier agrees to negotiate”. With a final ultimatum: that the government give them “discharge on the de-indexation of pensions or on the non-de-reimbursement of medicines”.
An “or” which is important, which suggested that a weakening of the executive on one of these two measures would be sufficient to escape censorship. And this Monday, Michel Barnier thus affirmed in an official press release that after a call with Marine Le Pen, the latter committed “that there will be no delisting of medicines” in 2025, fulfilling the conditions of Marine Le Pen and her group in the Assembly.
“I didn’t think she would dare.”
But it was obviously already too late, and the decision had already been made on the RN side. This Monday morning, Jordan Bardella affirmed that it would take “a last minute miracle” for his party not to vote for censure. And the announcement was finally made in the afternoon, following the government’s 49.3 on the Social Security budget. A decision that took Michel Barnier himself by surprise. “I didn’t believe she would dare,” said the Prime Minister this Monday during a meeting with the various group leaders of his ‘common base’, according to one of the participants to AFP. “We sees clearly that every time we let go of something, she asks for something else, and that at some point, we probably have to stop,” the Prime Minister would have added in reprieve.
And while great uncertainty awaits France again in the event of a vote – very likely – on one of the two motions of censure from the NFP or the RN this Wednesday afternoon, Marine Le Pen has already given pretty obvious clues about what happens next. “The Constitution provides three levers in the event of a major political crisis. Dissolution was used and the reshuffle would seem, if the crisis continued following several censorships, completely useless. It is true that the Constitution would then not give the President of the Republic, to get out of this, there is only one solution: resignation. It is his decision and that of no one else”, the leader of the RN is already planning in her interview. The Tribune.
Between a very clear suggestion of the prospect of an early departure of Emmanuel Macron from the Elysée, without doing too much to continue in this image of “respectability”, we fully find the balancing act of the RN since its arrival in numbers at the National Assembly from 2022, and even more since the dissolution last June. But the choice to vote for censorship will have proven it: the party with the flame is also ready to match actions with words.