The dissolution of the National Assembly transformed the Fifth Republic. In Ali Baba’s cave or museum of horrors? In any case, you can find everything there. A parliamentary group president, Laurent Wauquiez, invites himself to 8 p.m. on TF1 to announce a partial increase in pensions. The Minister of the Economy Antoine Armand opposes in an interview with Parisian has Michel Barnier on the elimination of reductions in employer contributions in the social security budget, supposed to generate four billion euros in savings. All without warning Matignon of his initiative: the Prime Minister’s office was informed neither of the speech nor of its content, contrary to its instructions given when the government was formed.
The calendar does things well. The Prime Minister meets the elected representative of Haute-Savoie this Thursday evening during a budget meeting. He plans to tell her all the good things he thinks of her approach. Both in substance and form…
The coalition is disrupting practices. A minister opens his mouth and doesn’t even resign. It disturbs identities, too. “I am Michel Barnier’s minister and above all I belong to the Ensemble pour la République family,” assumes Antoine Armand. A conflict of loyalties haunts this regular participant in the weekly meetings of the EPR group. He sliced it. “He feels that it all smells like pie, he prefers to stick to his friends,” smiles a pillar of the common base. Thus, the minister poses as spokesperson for his camp. After having swallowed so many snakes, the Macronist deputies set the increase in employer contributions as a red line. It would be an insult to their DNA, as well as a threat to employment. Concerns about the economic situation reinforce their intransigence.
“It looks like commissioned service”
“Courageous position, “healthy reminders”… As soon as the interview was published, compliments poured into the Telegram loop of EPR deputies. The group’s boss Gabriel Attal calls on his troops to “relay his interview” on their “networks”. “It looks like to the ordered service”, smiles a ministerial advisor. The standoff continues. The government has proposed to halve the reduction in the reduction in charges by reducing it to two billion. Gabriel Attal refuses this rebate. He wants the measure to be abandoned in return for other savings.
The threat invites itself into the negotiation. After its examination in the Senate, the social security budget will be debated next week during a joint committee bringing together deputies and senators. This body will be responsible for finding a compromise on the text promised in 49.3 during its final passage through the Assembly. Gabriel Attal plans to make this CMP “non-conclusive” if no agreement is found by then on the charges. The voice of the group’s representative, Stéphanie Rist, will indeed be decisive. He intends to submit this strategy to the vote of EPR deputies on Tuesday, November 26. “We are in our role, defends the deputy for Moselle Ludovic Mendes. It is out of the question to create an explosion of unemployment in the country.” Michel Barnier is a stiff man. Around the Savoyard, we judge the tactic to be poorly suited to the personality of the Prime Minister. The kind to direct it a little more. Even before the episode, Budget Minister Laurent Saint-Martin had warned a deputy: if we want to coax the Prime Minister, we must not scratch him. Any retreat on his part would then become an admission of weakness.
“49.3 will protect this CMP compromise”
Sincere threat? Useful pressure surge? Matignon does not rule out a failure of the CMP, and already promises to place the responsibility on the former presidential majority. On the other hand, it would be detrimental to the government, which is trying to give a democratic tone to the inevitable passage by force. “49.3 will protect this CMP compromise,” assured a minister at the start of the week. In the absence of compromise, the article would be stripped of this virtue.
The episode says everything about the fragile government coalition, a mixture of verticality and weakness. This team, built in an emergency, is not based on any project negotiated by political forces. Ministers are required to apply a road map set by Michel Barnier, as in the heyday of the absolute majority. But at the same time they have an unprecedented freedom of expression, the result of the political situation. Do they not carry the voice of parliamentary groups essential to the success of the adventure? Thus, Michel Barnier does not exercise clear authority over his troops. Former President Nicolas Sarkozy privately judges that the Brexit negotiator should sometimes take action, even if it means knocking off a head. It is not said that he can afford this luxury.
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