Will François Bayrou’s government see spring? In any case, he will have to face a first test this Thursday, January 16, with the examination in the National Assembly of a motion of censure which, even if it should ultimately not be adopted, will make it possible to clarify the position of the socialists. . Barely three weeks old, the government did not symbolically request the confidence of the Assembly on Tuesday after the Prime Minister’s general policy speech. Like his predecessor, he is deprived of a majority. In return, the elected officials of La France insoumise, who continue to demand the resignation of Emmanuel Macron, tabled a motion of censure, the 150th of the Fifth Republic. The vote on this spontaneous motion of censure is scheduled for around 5:30 p.m. and the result should be known around 6:00 p.m.
Information to remember
⇒ The PS postponed until this Thursday its decision to vote or not on the motion of censure
⇒ Yaël Braun-Pivet “hopes that everyone will act responsibly”
⇒ The government reverses the elimination of the 4,000 positions in national education initially planned, claiming to “protect” the school budget
Socialists divided over motion of censure
The motion of censure tabled by the Insoumis is also signed by communist and environmentalist deputies. But by no socialist. At the PS, despite long discussions, the decision to vote or not on the motion of censure was finally postponed… until this Thursday. After much procrastination and hesitation, the 66 socialist elected officials will have to determine whether the government’s concessions, in particular the announcement of a negotiation between social partners on the question of pensions to revise the 2023 pension reform, will be sufficient to win their non- censorship. “The authorities of the Socialist Party and the group in the Assembly will meet before the censure debate,” the party leadership told AFP on Wednesday evening.
“The account was not there in the National Assembly, neither yesterday, nor again today in questions to the government,” warned the leader of the socialist senators Patrick Kanner on Wednesday. François Bayrou had just announced that he would submit a new draft law on pensions to Parliament in the event of “progress” between the social partners, and even “without general agreement”.
“Act responsibly”, urges Yaël Braun-Pivet
We must always take “very seriously” motions of censure which are also “a mode of political action on the part of the oppositions”, affirmed this Thursday morning on TF1 Yaël Braun-Pivet the president of the National Assembly. “Act responsibly,” she said to the deputies. She continued: “We are in an extremely complicated situation, which is not the same as in December, we have no budget, the French need it.”
The RN and Liot will not vote for censorship
The executives of the National Rally, whose votes are essential to overthrow the government, have already indicated that their deputies do not intend to vote on the motion of censure tabled by LFI. It was then impossible for the latter to reach the 288 votes necessary for its adoption.
Stéphane Lenormand, president of the independent group Liot (Libertés, Indépendants, Outre-mer), also indicated to AFP that his troops would not vote for it. “We will wait for the finance bill and the one on Social Security. We do not rule out taking a different position on these two meetings,” he warned.
The government reconsiders the elimination of 4,000 positions in national education
The government announced on Wednesday that it was reversing the elimination of the 4,000 positions in national education initially planned, claiming to “protect” the school budget and thus acceding to one of the demands made by the socialists in the discussions aimed at to avoid censorship. “I am ready to renounce this proposal to eliminate 4,000 positions in National Education,” said Prime Minister François Bayrou in his general policy statement to the Senate, responding to the socialist Patrick Kanner.
During his general policy declaration before the National Assembly on Tuesday, the Prime Minister did not address the question of these job cuts initially planned in the 2025 budget concocted by Michel Barnier, one of the elements likely to allow an agreement of non-censorship with the PS. In an interview with Parisian published Wednesday evening, the Minister of National Education Elisabeth Borne, who had affirmed at the beginning of January that she wanted to “fight” to maintain the number of national education staff, confirmed that the government was going to “reverse” this suppression.