“Restore order, restore order, restore order”: the new Minister (Les Républicains) of the Interior, Bruno Retailleau, announced his intentions on Monday, September 23, during the transfer of power. “We must have the courage to be firm […] for the beaten-up schoolboy, for the raped young girl, for the grieving widow of the policeman, for our compatriots who, because of their origins, their skin colour, their beliefs, are threatened,” he hammered home in the courtyard of Beauvau, after the speech by his predecessor, Gérald Darmanin.
Key information to remember
⇒ France’s public deficit is “one of the worst in its history”, according to Antoine Armand
⇒ First disagreements between Bruno Retailleau and Didier Migaud
⇒ Macron and Barnier’s popularity at its lowest, according to an Odoxa poll
Retailleau responds to Migaud and denounces “a right to non-execution of sentences”
Bruno Retailleau called on CNews and Europe 1 on Tuesday, September 24, for “legislative changes” to address what he considers to be “a right to non-execution of sentences” in France, responding to comments by Minister of Justice Didier Migaud.
Less than 24 hours after taking office, Bruno Retailleau and Didier Migaud, Ministers of the Interior and Justice, one a hard-right winger, keen to “restore order”, the other from the Socialist Party, seem to have started a showdown. The day before, the new Minister of Justice, Didier Migaud, had said on France 2 that “he (Bruno Retailleau) must know that justice is independent in our country and that this is something that is essential in a democracy”.
“We must restore citizens’ confidence in their institutions, in justice too, because there is sometimes the feeling that justice is slow or does not condemn enough, (but) that is not always true,” he said.
Asked about these remarks, Bruno Retailleau retorted on Tuesday morning: “The independence of judges, yes, but there is the sovereignty of Parliament and the French people through the laws that Parliament can vote on.” “It is not the problem of magistrates as such, it is not the problem of the Minister of Justice as such, it is the problem of the texts that must be changed,” according to the Minister of the Interior, who cited juvenile justice. “I think that there must be legislative changes,” he insisted.
France has “one of the worst deficits in its history”, says the Minister of Economy
The new Minister of Economy, Antoine Armand, judged this Tuesday that the public deficit of France was “one of the worst in (its) history”. “Apart from one or two years of exceptional crisis in the last 50 years, we have one of the worst deficits in our history. So, on this level, the situation is serious”, declared Antoine Armand on France Inter about this burning issue.
Regarding a possible increase in levies for certain large companies, which Medef boss Patrick Martin said he was “ready to discuss” under conditions, the minister responded: “We will work on it with him, with all companies of all sizes, and obviously with the social partners”, believing that “dialogue with the social partners must be resumed”. “We will work to the extent of the seriousness of this situation. […] My job is to ensure that any levies that may exist do not hinder our growth, do not hinder job creation,” he said.
End of life: Braun-Pivet wants the text to be “re-examined in the Assembly before the end of the year”
The President of the National Assembly, Yaël Braun-Pivet, said on Tuesday that she hoped that the text on the end of life would be “reexamined before the end of the year in the Assembly”, while the examination of the bill had been interrupted just before the vote a few days before the dissolution. “This is a text that is awaited by the French and so I hope that it will be reexamined in the National Assembly before the end of the year. We are ready, the text is ready and so we have to go for it”, declared Yaël Braun-Pivet on BFMTV. This law was to legalize assisted suicide and, in certain specific cases, euthanasia, by bringing important conditions to it, while refusing to use these terms, preferring to speak of “active aid in dying”.
MP Olivier Falorni (affiliated with Modem), who chaired the parliamentary debates on the bill, has just tabled a proposal that largely takes up the content of the interrupted project, signed by 166 MPs including Yaël Braun-Pivet, former Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne and three presidents of left-wing groups. But several members of the government from LR have shown themselves firmly opposed to the text, first and foremost Bruno Retailleau, from the conservative right.
Furthermore, Yaël Braun-Pivet warned the new Minister of the Interior on Tuesday against “circumventing” Parliament, while he mentioned in particular the possibility of modifying State medical aid (AME) for undocumented immigrants by decree. “I will be very attentive to this. Parliament will not be circumvented. I expect the government to respect Parliament in all its prerogatives and therefore to involve it in building the policies it wishes to pursue,” declared the President of the National Assembly.
Barnier government spokesperson Maud Bregeon acknowledges a “perilous mission”
Maud Bregeon, spokesperson for Michel Barnier’s government, acknowledged on Tuesday that she was undertaking “a perilous mission” in a “broad government” that brings together ministers from the hardest right with moderate Macronists. “It is a mission that is perilous in a fragile, complex context,” explained Maud Bregeon, who has been a Renaissance MP since 2022, on RTL.
Asked about the differences of opinion, for example, between the Minister of Justice Didier Migaud and his colleague at the Interior Ministry Bruno Retailleau, this close friend of Gérald Darmanin praised the decision not to form “a government of clones”. “We are not discovering it, we do not all think the same, we have had differences in the past, we have different histories, different political cultures”, she insisted. She spoke of “a government of national emergency” which will try to “find ourselves on the lowest common denominators”.
Macron and Barnier’s popularity at its lowest, according to an Odoxa poll
The two heads of the executive, Emmanuel Macron and Michel Barnier, are breaking records of unpopularity, with only 25% of favorable opinions for the first and 39% for the second, according to an Odoxa-Mascaret poll published this Tuesday.
Only 25% of respondents consider Emmanuel Macron to be a “good” president, an “absolute record of unpopularity in seven years”, according to this study carried out for Public Sénat and twenty regional daily press titles. Similarly, 39% consider Michel Barnier to be a “good” Prime Minister, a score lower than those collected by his four predecessors when they arrived at Matignon (55% for Edouard Philippe in May 2017, 40% for Jean Castex in September 2020, 43% for Elisabeth Borne in May 2022, and 48% for Gabriel Attal in January 2024).