He managed to be sober to rise to the height of the moment, which does not fall under the first reflex at home. But even if he aspires to be president of a “new era”, Emmanuel Macron remains Emmanuel Macron. Wednesday evening, in his solemn address to the French, again on the front line, he sets the framework, defines the strategy, poses the terms of the debate. In this he is completely in his role, head of state, head of the armies. This is where the rub. He must also “ensure compliance with the Constitution”, according to article 5. However, he sits on fundamental law, a habit or even a mania at his home-ask the Prime Minister then, Gabriel Attal, to the presidents of the National Assembly and the Senate, Yaël Braun-Pivet and Gérard Larcher-if they had the impression of being “consulted” before the announcement of the dissolution in 2024.
This time, it is on another point that Emmanuel Macron takes liberties with what should force him. “Without taxes being increased”: in the name of which article in the Constitution, does the President of the Republic decide on tax policy? He can certainly highlight the famous article 40, unchanged since 1958, and which specifies: “The proposals and amendments formulated by the members of the Parliament are not admissible when their adoption would have a decrease in public resources, or the creation or worsening of a public charge.”
But that’s it. The budgetary equation no longer belongs to her, it fully belongs, and only, to the government – to François Bayrou to find in Parliament a majority which allows him to go after his projects. This Thursday morning, the Béarnais said: “We will not leave any of the country’s problems aside. I would have the opportunity to express myself in the days coming from the choices that the government intends to wear.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JGY72K5P0VU
Talk outside the nails, or speak too early
“When the Parliament voted a law, I become a notary,” said François Mitterrand in his time, who was not the type to abandon the slightest plot of his power. If Emmanuel Macron has a responsibility, it is not to cannibalize the real debate on the budgetary effort which is now imposed in the country.
Talking outside the nails, or talking too early: that it is difficult for Emmanuel Macron to escape Emmanuel Macron. At the start of the week, London is forced to deny Paris: on Sunday, the French president announced to Figaro Offer a month of truce in Ukraine “in the air, on the seas and energy infrastructure”, in consultation with Keir Starmer. Unclassy obsession with drawing the cover, unlimited taste for staging? He publicly evokes this point … before he even exchanged with the head of the British government. The next day, the British Secretary of State for the Armed Forces claims that the two countries did not agree on a proposal for a month of a month in Ukraine: “There is no agreement on what a truce would look like.”
So is this president. “We must give power to the one who speaks on behalf of the French, even if he always makes things complicated,” notes in private the first secretary of the PS, Olivier Faure. Fortunately, Emmanuel Macron no longer set himself as a goal, as he did in 2020 during the Covid crisis, to “reinvent me the first”.