Laurent Wauquiez’s phone stopped ringing. The head of the Republican Right (DR) deputies has not spoken with François Bayrou since the formation of the government. The elected official from Haute-Loire has a fault. It does not belong to the Socialist Party, which the executive seeks to coax to escape censorship. He therefore remembered the good memories of Béarnais, on the eve of his highly anticipated general policy declaration (DPG).
In an interview with Parisianhe warns the Prime Minister against any suspension of pension reform “without an alternative scenario” and calls on him to initiate a reduction in public spending. “I will not vote for a budget with new tax increases,” assures the former minister. In September, he knew that Michel Barnier wanted to increase taxes when he refused to settle in Bercy. The right has lost since Matignon, the fog envelops it.
Bruno Retailleau sees it barely more clearly. The Minister of the Interior sent a note to François Bayrou to remind him of his priorities. He too will listen attentively to the Prime Minister’s speech on Tuesday. In their private conversations, the mayor of Pau appears open to the grievances of the tenant of Beauvau. In public, he is more evasive about his minister’s roadmap. What will be its latitude of action? “The DPG will be a founding moment, admits a faithful Vendéen. The negotiation had been clearer with Michel Barnier. There, the context is more vague to the extent that Bayrou is an emanation of Macronism.” And then, the right does not threaten to bring down the government. Why shower him with information?
The executive prefers to cajole the left. The Minister of the Economy Eric Lombard was mandated to negotiate a non-censorship agreement with the Socialist Party. He undertook to tell his interlocutors before the fatal hour the results of the races. Installed in the hemicycle, the socialist elected officials will not miss a bit of the intervention of the head of government. Tax justice, the future of pension reform… Will their demands find a rhetorical translation? The exegetes will dissect each Béarnais formula to detect its meaning or hidden intentions.
Unprecedented vigor
Was DPG better before? Simpler, anyway. Under the presidency of Emmanuel Macron, the exercise has long been agreed upon. “Nobody cared,” notes a follower of François Bayrou. “It was a simple speech towards the institutions.” Each head of government stood watch over the presidential project, with his own style. Emmanuel Macron even took great pleasure in pulling the rug out from under them. The Head of State gave a speech to Congress on the eve of Edouard Philippe’s DPG. Gabriel Attal’s speech was preceded by a presidential press conference.
In his work Twenty months in Matignon (Flammarion), Elisabeth Borne only finds one strangeness in the exercise: “You don’t know, when you present your roadmap to the deputies, if you are there for five years or for fifteen days.” François Bayrou could more than ever appropriate this remark. It’s the only one. The dissolution and the absence of a majority in the Assembly exploded the old patterns. This is the General Policy Declaration endowed with unprecedented vigor.
We do not discover a method, but a policy. The style of the head of government, the cornerstone of ancient declarations, becomes almost incidental. “The rest of the five-year term will be played out on Tuesday, slips the Minister of the Economy Eric Lombard privately. The platform between the parties which support the executive and those who want to work with it is the DPG.” Curious platform, lost in a political no man’s land. Lacking a majority, the executive is increasing consultations with parliamentary groups to ensure its survival. But the Prime Minister does not rely on a “coalition”, united by a political project negotiated after the legislative elections. The DPG slips into this gap. Symptom of a rebound in parliamentarism, as it is preceded by negotiations. A sign of a vertical culture specific to the Fifth Republic, as its preparation is shrouded in mystery. In François Bayrou’s work, constraints and discretionary power mingle.
Semantics and symbols
François Bayrou has the reputation of writing his speeches alone. He will have to demonstrate semantic creativity, as his injunctions are contradictory. Some terms are as much caresses as they are slaps. The leader of the socialists Olivier Faure said on Sunday that he was only waiting for a “very simple word” from François Bayrou not to vote for the motion of censure: “suspension” of the pension reform. The right and the Macronists reject this ambition in the name of preserving public finances. The President of the Senate Gérard Larcher calls for the absence of “suspension” or “repeal” of the text adopted in 2023. “We have paid the price of blood on this reform, I would find it incredible if we agreed to suspend it” , confided an LR minister in December.
François Bayrou must deal with the symbolic charge of the word. Here, it is an antidote to the trial of compromise with the Macronist power. There, an abandonment of reformist DNA. “The writing on the pensions chapter is very important, admits a relative. But we have to find the formula that makes the socialists say “banco let’s go”.” Eric Lombard made it clear to the socialists that he was not opposed to the suspension, while specifying that only François Bayrou will decide. Certainly the left is waiting for a gesture, a word, in the Prime Minister’s speech, but do not forget the sequence of events. The devil is in the details: the upcoming budget discussion could be the nest of ranting that will change the minds of the socialists.
As is customary, François Bayrou will reveal his general policy declaration to Emmanuel Macron before entering the hemicycle. They both discussed this. When he reads the text, the president could find someone absent: himself. The dissolution of the Assembly ousted Emmanuel Macron from the General Policy Declaration. On October 1, Michel Barnier simply praised his efforts to promote “the attractiveness of France”. This tribute was intended more to reassure the former presidential majority than to honor the president. So far from the presidential “cap”, praised by Edouard Philippe in 2017. Or from the “values carried by the project of the President of the Republic” praised by Elisabeth Borne in 2022. It is reasonable to think that François Bayrou’s speech will not place the head of state in the foreground. Was DPG better before? A man must think so.
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