Gabriel Attal faces his very first motion of censure this Monday, February 5. If the scenario of the rejection of the “no confidence” motion seems the most likely, in the event of adoption, the Prime Minister will have to present the resignation of his government.
No respite for Gabriel Attal. The Prime Minister spent last week hosting unions to find a solution to the farmers’ crisis. His announcements on Thursday seem to have finally borne fruit, while at the end of the week we saw the lifting of blockades almost everywhere in France. But this Monday, the Prime Minister begins the week by facing his very first motion of censure. Failing to have requested a vote of confidence following its general policy speech on Tuesday January 30, the united left tabled a motion of censure which was examined in the morning in the National Assembly.
“Without a clear political objective, without definitively defined portfolios or ministerial boundaries, Mr. Gabriel Attal has, for three weeks, been the captain of a boat adrift,” deplore the rebellious deputies, socialists, ecologists and communists in particular. But to pass, this motion of censure must receive the votes of other deputies, the 150 from the left not being enough to reach the threshold of 289 deputies necessary to have it adopted. However, the right and the extreme right, the main providers of votes for the opposition in the hemicycle of the Palais Bourbon, have already made it known that they do not intend to vote for this motion.
In other words, like almost all of the hundred or so motions of censure already tabled since the start of the Fifth Republic, this one should not meet with the success expected by its authors. Public Senate recalls in fact that only one was voted on. It was in 1962, under the presidency of Georges Pompidou. Unless there is any general surprise, Attal’s government should remain in place and pursue its ambitions. The fact remains that in the event of an unexpected reversal of the situation, during which the motion of “no confidence” would finally be adopted, Gabriel Attal would then have to apply article 50 of the Constitution, namely: present the resignation of his government.