“I will take my responsibilities. This is what my colleagues expect of me, and especially the French.” When Yaël Braun-Pivet, on the set of 4 Truths Tuesday, May 30, finally confirms, half-word, that she will commit to blocking the initiative of the Liot group to repeal the pension reform, we hardly know to whom she wishes, in the first place, to send a message . To viewers, some of whom will see in it the armed arm of power to annihilate the action of opposition? Or to the troops of the majority, and in particular of her own political formation, who have constantly abused her throughout the month of May? The latter, in any case, are calmed and reassured. The first ones…
Article 40 of the Constitution is not only the provision which prohibits any amendment or proposal of law (PPL) from aggravating public expenditure. It is also the point of contention which once again put water in the gas between the President of the National Assembly and the Macronist staff. Wind up against the first article of the PPL of Charles de Courson which they considered unconstitutional by its 18 billion of savings suppressed, the executive and the majority, determined to avoid its examination in session on June 8, turned to a boulder towards Yaël Braun-Pivet to signal the end of recess. How many times did they ask him to “take responsibility”? 100? 1,000? Someone has to take all the hits, and only the roost tenant can press the button.
Among the billions of provisions, articles of the regulations, gray areas scrutinized by the majority to counter Liot’s offensive, a stratagem quickly gained consensus. In the confabulations, the president of the Renaissance group Aurore Bergé – with whom relations are notoriously checkered – as well as the Minister for Relations with Parliament Franck Riester advised Yaël Braun-Pivet to convene the office of the Assembly to retort the text… Even though the latter, out of a tradition of respect for opposition, had previously accepted it. Complicated gymnastics, even if it allowed the president to take shelter behind the choice of a collegiate body. Categorical refusal on the part of Yaël Braun-Pivet, who, as a good guardian of the temple and its rules, does not imagine for a single moment creating such a precedent.
The return of the trials
Thus begins the trench warfare. Again, the recurring criticism from his family rained down as in Gravelotte. His trial in “autonomy”, in “independence”, sometimes even in “treason”, resurfaces. In the Renaissance group, we point to “a feverishness which is based only on one thing, his personal destiny”, according to a deputy re-elected last June, or else a repeated inability to protect his camp as much as the institution: “We do not not ask to rig the game, we ask him to respect the constitution, which in addition protects us”, adds another leader of the group. In the Braun-Pivet corner, we do not appreciate that the Macronist troops, too, want to twist the regulations from the start while giving blows to the fourth character of the State who, in any case, was going to receive them. “She puts us in trouble. In her place, I would have said in a group meeting: ‘I take the political blow, that’s my role, but then I ask for absolute solidarity around me and for everyone to be in defence.’ She would have been the first rope of macronism! slips a close friend of the President of the Republic. “I have to remain impartial and respect the rules”, merely responds Braun-Pivet in front of the reassembled parliamentarians.
At the Hotel de Lassay, we are told that the President of the National Assembly wanted above all “not to reveal her game”. Do not show what is happening in the kitchen, between her, Matignon and the Elysée, and spread the strategies in the press… Which ends up happening in the columns of Mediapart. His services are already working on other scenarios, more skilful and less delicate on a personal level, starting with the one that took place this Tuesday, May 30: the deletion of article 1 of the PPL Liot in the Social Affairs Committee , so that it returns to the session on June 8 by way of amendment and can be challenged by Yaël Braun-Pivet. “She played her political coup well in her strategy, to be as neutral as possible without creating a precedent”, admits a deputy close to Aurore Bergé, who surprises himself to give the point to a president that he does not carry in his heart. End of the psychodrama and return to calm. But how long?
If the episode illustrates the tension generated in Macronie by the insecure context of relative majority, it also demonstrates the tenuous, fragile link which unites Yaël Braun-Pivet to the direction of the Renaissance group and even to part of the executive. Beyond that, the unusual presidency of an ambitious parliamentarian whose experience, ostensibly impartial position and relationship with the Elysée stand out from those of her predecessors. Rarely have we insisted so much on the distance that remains between the first and the fourth personage of the State than today. First, because Braun-Pivet was not the Château’s first choice. His victory over Roland Lescure, the elected official, symbolized the slow start of Emmanuel Macron’s five-year term and the erosion of his authority within his troops. In his book The dayless, the very informed Ludovic Vigogne recounts the story of this vote which looks like a forfeiture: from Elisabeth Borne to Olivier Véran (at the time Minister for Relations with Parliament), via the Secretary General of the Elysée Palace Alexis Kohler, we struggled within the executive so that Yaël Braun-Pivet ended up losing on the thread. Emmanuel Macron will also send several text messages to Véran in the final hours of the ballot: “It has to be Lescure.” In vain.
Loyalty, but not servility…
Don’t ask anyone. Don’t wait for orders. Take your risk. Are these not the historical leitmotivs of Macronism? Yaël Braun-Pivet is proud to have followed the chef’s original precepts to the letter. Since then, she keeps repeating, to anyone who wants to listen, that she is “very loyal and very free”… Well, does that remind you of anything? Edouard Philippe, with whom the President of the Assembly says he gets along wonderfully, could claim copyright. Only a “but” separates them; the mayor of Le Havre and his acute sense of gradation pushed the cork a tad further.
In recent months, the fiercest tongues have poured out on this institutional collaboration of a new nature. Decidedly, there would be something wrong. “She has no relationship with the president, Macron does not care about her, he does not treat her, with her he does the minimum service”, explains a pillar of Renaissance, when a minister who knows the workings of life well parliamentarian explains that “this distancing ends up being problematic”. On the contrary, Yaël Braun-Pivet is honored to have methodically built a barrier between his function and partisan politics. For having left behind the doorstep of the Hôtel de Lassay clan logic and courtesy. “With the president, we see each other, we write to each other, but it’s work. And it’s still him who got me into politics thanks to his call for openness to civil society, j I have a memory and I am indebted”, she thunders, all in balance.
Times and practices have changed, seems to mean La Nancy. The time when the Head of State could count on an intimate among the intimates at the perch, Richard Ferrand, to watch over the grain, is over. “They do not have the same relationship, it is clear, sweeps away one of his relatives, who seems to have had enough of this reflection. She will never overplay their relationship, it is a working relationship, of loyalty, but which will never be a relationship of servility. A rule was laid down between the two at the start of the school year in September: the president of the Assembly is not a group president, it is up to her to make politics, and that’s good, she loves it.” To the chagrin of some of the deputies of the Renaissance group who, nostalgic or irritated, sometimes both, would like to be able to count their own Gérard Larcher in their ranks. Whatever. To those who imagined one day being able to disembark her, Yaël Braun-Pivet replies in an SMS: “On occasion, you can invite your interlocutors to read article 32 of the Constitution :)”. The one who mentions, precisely, that “the President of the National Assembly is elected for the duration of the legislature”. Immovable.