such an expensive pas de deux with Marine Le Pen – L’Express

such an expensive pas de deux with Marine Le Pen

Michel Barnier has not always announced bad news to the National Assembly. Before this disastrous 49.3, triggered this Monday, December 2, to have the social security budget adopted, the Prime Minister was the bearer of offerings. On November 12, he responded to the boss of the Republican Right (DR) deputies Laurent Wauquiez. He confirms the partial revaluation of pensions, going against the pension freeze initially planned by the executive. “Your group, the very first, brought up this subject,” he says.

READ ALSO: “It is not adapted to the times”: Michel Barnier, too vintage an attitude facing the risk of censorship

At the far right of the hemicycle, a hubbub is emerging. Does the RN not bear this grievance? What a lack of respect… Michel Barnier turns to these deputies with fragile egos. “Other groups have carried it: yours, the grassroots groups, the left-wing groups.” The RN is consoled, but not mentioned. Its acronym, two simple letters, smells of sulfur.

The smell of censorship freed the Prime Minister from his modesty. This Monday, December 2, the name of “Marine Le Pen” is mentioned in a press release from Matignon announcing the absence of drug reimbursement in 2025. In substance and form, Marine Le Pen is satisfied. “They want our votes and not our heads, we’ve been experiencing this for forty years!”, she got annoyed in The World on November 28. This gesture was not enough. The boss of RN deputies announced her intention to join her votes with those of the left to censure the government.

An ambition swept away

It is the story of an ambition swept away. The oldest Prime Minister of the Fifth Republic is about to become Matignon’s shortest tenant. It is the story, above all, of a strategy smashed against the wall of reality. Michel Barnier made the restoration of accounts an absolute priority. He made costly concessions to escape censorship. He did not want to offer an ostensible victory to the far right, which placed him “under surveillance”. He granted him symbolic successes, without being paid in return. “Having given in to the RN allows it to take an unexpected step by sealing its institutionalization,” laments an EPR executive. When the end of the story is almost known, it is easy to remake the film.

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Back to October 1st. From the podium of the Assembly, Michel Barnier delivers his general policy declaration (DPG). He is ironic about his own fate. Commentators speak of “a sword of Damocles on the head of the government”? No, the “real” threat facing the French is “financial debt”. Michel Barnier explains it to his interlocutors in the wake of his appointment: “I found a letter on my desk from the governor of the Bank of France.” There is financial danger at hand, and even if he says “not to be here to manage a deficit that I found”, he must start with that. When the deputy for Lot Aurélien Pradié urges him to give the country a “course”, the Prime Minister throws the famous letter back in his face. His successor Gabriel Attal notes his frequent references to notes from the Treasury or the budget department.

“Fournel is very hands-on”

The head of government repeats it again and again: he only had two weeks to prepare a “perfect” budget. So, he relies on his chief of staff, the senior civil servant Jérôme Fournel, who previously headed Bruno Le Maire’s office in Bercy. “I don’t have the knowledge of Jerome,” he admits privately, while noting that “bureaucrats only take the power that is left to them.” What power does he leave him? Laurent Wauquiez finds the Prime Minister too submissive to the technostructure of Bercy. “Yes, he says it, but it’s false,” confides Michel Barnier. “Jérôme Fournel is very hands-on,” notes an EPR executive. One day, the Minister of Justice Didier Migaud expressed surprise to his superior at a strict budgetary decision made by the chief of staff. “Ah, you’re teaching me that,” retorts Michel Barnier. The Minister of Justice will win his case. On November 25, Marine Le Pen and Jean-Philippe Tanguy found Fournel particularly loquacious in the second part of their meeting with the Prime Minister.

READ ALSO: When Michel Barnier isolates himself with Marine Le Pen, Anne Hidalgo shelters his loved ones before his departure

The Savoyard’s partners are hungry for victory. The Prime Minister must deal with his turbulent Common Base allies. To Laurent Wauquiez, 800 million euros on pensions. To Gabriel Attal, a smaller reduction in reductions in business charges, amounting to 2.4 billion euros. The bill is rising, the objective of reducing the deficit to 5% in 2025 is moving away. The spirit of compromise is worth a few billion. But when the RN knocks on the door and demands its dues, the story becomes hot. Is it morally admissible to make a concession to Marine Le Pen, how can we stage it when Laurent Wauquiez has granted himself the right to exhibit his trophy at 8 p.m. on TF1?

An impossible arbitration

Part of Matignon’s cabinet is reluctant to make any gestures: too expensive budgetarily, too costly politically; another believes, on the contrary, that one should not have the modesty of a young girl. “But there is also a lot of pressure coming from the group,” says a minister close to Michel Barnier: “if you let go too much, we won’t forgive you.” AME, tax on electricity… The head of government is letting go, without ever recognizing the authorship of the concession. “Whether it was in my majority or the opposition leaders that I received: almost all of them asked me to evolve,” he eludes in Le Figaro about electricity.

READ ALSO: “For him, I am a Nazi”: Marine Le Pen – Emmanuel Macron, our revelations on their exchanges

When he received Marine Le Pen, the Prime Minister told her three times: “This meeting is not the start of a negotiation.” Until then, the candidate for the Elysée asked her spokespersons to be very careful about censorship. They will soon be much less so. And too bad for Michel Barnier’s final concession, writing the name of the devil of the Republic on an official press release – in capital letters at that.

The Prime Minister has been subjected for weeks to a difficult choice. Firstly, on an economic level. He must deconstruct his budget to prevent France from sinking into economic uncertainty, a corollary of censorship. On a political level, especially. This deconstruction involves offerings to the far right, all pledges of normalization. Ethical and economic considerations mingle in this impossible arbitration. “Is government stability worth ten billion? I would say yes,” judges someone close to Emmanuel Macron, in allusion to Michel Barnier’s concessions. Faithful to the Head of State, the Paris deputy David Amiel tempers: “Giving in, even by an inch, to the blackmail of the extreme right, is a mistake.” Michel Barnier has been swimming in these opposing currents for two months. He now faces the inspectors of the finished works, certain of being right. Is it censored? What a useless cultural victory offered to the RN! He isn’t? Hats off to the artist, France has saved its budget, but at what cost! Ending up as a useful idiot wasn’t exactly the plan.

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