We’re getting closer every day. Michel Barnier announced this Thursday, November 14, to West France that he will “probably” engage his government’s responsibility for the budget through article 49.3 of the Constitution, allowing adoption of the text without a vote.
“When I see what happened in the Assembly”, where its supporters from the right and the center rejected the draft budget for 2025 which had been profoundly modified by the left, “it seems difficult to me to do differently at the end of the discussion”, said the Prime Minister in an interview with the regional daily published online this Thursday evening. “But you will observe that we have chosen to let the debate take place there,” he added.
While 49.3 can be followed by the filing of a motion of censure, he believes that “the French do not want” the overthrow of the government. “What I hear the most is ‘courage, hold on’. Believe me, I have plenty of that,” he adds.
“Significant adjustments” for communities
In this draft budget, the head of government promises “significant adjustments” in favor of communities. The departments, before which he is due to speak this Friday morning in Angers, have called on the government to review its budgetary copy, which they say threatens them with “asphyxiation”.
The Prime Minister assures that he will “not recreate” a housing tax, which had been abolished by Emmanuel Macron and whose return is demanded by certain mayors, nor “create new local taxes”, while the Minister of Partnership with the territories Catherine Vautrin said she was “open to a debate on local taxation”.
He is also “very reserved” about the idea of eliminating a public holiday to fill the Social Security coffers. “I am very reserved about this idea, which is complex to implement and which I am not sure will yield what some claim.” “What is at stake is that there are more French people working,” he adds, pleading in favor of “social dialogue”.
“Task force” on social levels
In terms of education, another priority issue for the government, he affirms that he “does not share” Nicolas Sarkozy’s recent comments on school teachers who, according to the former president, only work “six months a year” . “School teachers, who alone take care of an entire class from morning to evening, do a job that is both difficult and essential,” he emphasizes.
Faced with the multiplication, feared by the government, of social plans in companies, he indicates that his government will set up a “task force” between “all the ministers concerned (labor, industry, finance, budget, etc.) to provide rapid responses to each particular situation. The government is also “asking all companies that have received public money in recent years, particularly to overcome the Covid and expensive energy crises, to tell us what they have done with it” , adds Michel Barnier.
He describes his relations with the President of the Republic as “simple and fluid”. And wants to remind people that he “did not roll on the ground to be Prime Minister”. “I was ready, available, but I wasn’t asking. I accepted, telling myself that I could be useful. With my method.” He thus does not exclude “holding decentralized meetings” of the government.