Elisabeth Borne. After causing an outcry this week by responding to a woman in a wheelchair on the radio, Elisabeth Borne focused on the government’s future measures against inflation, three days before the first round of the legislative elections…
[Mis à jour le 9 juin 2022 à 16h37] Elisabeth Borne, campaigning in Versailles then in Calvados last night, where she herself is a candidate, is stepping up the interventions three days before the legislative elections now, which will begin on Sunday June 12, with the first round of voting. During a meeting in Vire this Wednesday evening, the Prime Minister once again emphasized purchasing power and the measures promised by the government to respond to the inflation that is spreading across the country.
After having assured that the State was not earning any money on fuel taxes, in the midst of soaring gasoline prices, the patron of the government reiterated her intention to “protect purchasing power”, in particular with the ” tariff shield” (on electricity and gas prices) extended until the end of the year and costing “20 to 25 billion in expenditure” for the State. Elisabeth Borne also returned to the aid for the most modest promised in September in the face of rising prices, with the direct payment of emergency compensation while waiting for a “food voucher”, as well as the revaluation of 4% of all retreats in July.
No doubt drawing lessons from the presidential election where the subject was put forward late, the Prime Minister is thus trying to hammer home that the government is acting for the portfolio of the French, at the end of a sluggish campaign. A legislative campaign dominated in the media by Jean-Luc Mélenchon and Nupes who have constantly castigated the government’s record and intentions in the social field. Latest evidence: the outcry caused by Elisabeth Borne herself during an exchange on the radio with a disabled person on Tuesday.
This Tuesday, June 7, on the antenna of France Bleu, Elisabeth Borne faced a disabled listener, Dolorès, who alerted her to her situation. This fifty-year-old, in a wheelchair since a serious accident, pointed in particular to the method of calculating the allowance for disabled adults (AAH), based in part on the partner’s income. It was during this exchange that the former Minister of Labor advised her interlocutor to “resume a professional activity” in connection with “structures for which it is the responsibility”. A proposal that immediately caused a very palpable unease on the set.
Faced with an Elisabeth Borne who painfully tried to develop an argument around the inclusion of people with disabilities, it was a tearful listener who finally opposed her distress. After a silence, Dolores spoke again, sobs in her voice: “I love it when the Prime Minister says to resume a professional life, you know when you arrive in a wheelchair …”, she said. , visibly annoyed.
If Elisabeth Borne recalled that people with disabilities could benefit from aid for “everyday life” which is “not means-tested” and if she promised that her government would look into the “deconjugalization” of the AAH , the indignant critics did not delay, in particular on the left. As of Tuesday evening, Jean-Luc Mélenchon denounced a “brutal technocrat”, who “humiliates a woman in a wheelchair”, while the communist Fabien Roussel was moved by a “freezing” sequence.
Elisabeth Borne will have been forced to explain herself, from Versailles yesterday, ensuring that she never “intended” to “hurt”. “What I want to say is that if the person – Dolores in this case – could have been hurt by my words, I regret it. Of course, I did not intend to hurt her”, declared the Prime Minister in the afternoon. This speech followed that of the government spokesperson Olivia Grégoire who had already defended Elisabeth Borne at the exit of the Council of Ministers to ensure her “compassion and empathy”. “If there is one thing that we cannot blame him for, it is a lack of empathy towards our compatriots and in particular the most fragile”, had hammered the new megaphone of the executive.
Once the new government was appointed, Elisabeth Borne found herself on the front line in the 2022 legislative campaign: the Prime Minister is traditionally in charge of leading the majority at the national level during the battle for the Assembly. It is with this deadline in mind that the recent head of the government went to the Palais Bourbon, from Tuesday, May 17, to meet the deputies of the majority. “I wanted to be with you the day after my appointment,” said the Prime Minister to motivate her troops. “I see that you are all on the ground to carry our project. I am also in the campaign, I say it, I continue this campaign!”
Never elected, the former Minister of Labor, originally from Normandy, was indeed herself invested in the 6th constituency of Calvados, which had placed Emmanuel Macron clearly in the lead in the two rounds of the presidential election. It is therefore a double-campaign, national and local, that Elisabeth Borne must carry out at the same time, in addition to the major files of this beginning of the five-year term which are not lacking (purchasing power package with much-awaited aid to limit the effects of inflation, new pension or education reform, ecological planning promised by Emmanuel Macron, etc.). In the event of individual or collective defeat in these legislative elections, his future at Matignon would be immediately compromised. This is not a first: Michel Rocard or Jean-Marc Ayrault had taken up the same challenge, one in 1988 and the other in 2012.
Who is Elisabeth Borne? Express Biography
Before being appointed Prime Minister, Elisabeth Borne was Minister of Labor in the Castex government, after having held the portfolios of Transport and Ecological Transition since 2017. Relatively little known to the French, which can constitute “an asset” in her new functions, it was however “more so than were Édouard Philippe and especially Jean Castex” when they arrived at Matignon.
A graduate of Polytechnique, a tenacious technician, deemed loyal, Elisabeth Borne is in any case perceived by Macronie as having proven herself in government throughout the last five-year term. This former chief of staff of Ségolène Royal, who was also prefect and leader of large public companies such as the RATP, also has the merit of belonging to the left wing of the majority, an asset in the run-up to the legislative elections and the he time when new social reforms are announced, starting with “the mother of battles” on pensions.
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Her appointment was, however, viewed with caution by some members of the presidential party, sharing the opinion of many pillars of the opposition on one point: Elizabeth Borne is above all a senior civil servant, with a sense of state that borders on administrative loyalty. The profile of this engineer would not be “political enough” in their eyes and should leave plenty of room for Emmanuel Macron in this perimeter.