Over the past few days, a pressing question has emerged: Will France have a government at Christmas? Furthermore, will it even have a budget? Prime Minister Michel Barnier has indicated that he may activate Article 49.3 of the Constitution to pass the budget bill without a vote, a scenario he described as "probable." This raises the question of whether opposition MPs from the left and far right will unite their efforts to challenge and potentially block the bill.
From a mathematical perspective, the situation is clear: If the 124 MPs of the far-right Rassemblement National (RN) – 140 if you count RN ally Eric Ciotti and his followers – support a motion proposed by the left-wing Nouveau Front Populaire alliance (192 MPs), the government will be toppled. "It will fall between December 15 and 21," predicted radical-left leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon, on Sunday, November 17, during an interview on France 3. He is dreaming of an early presidential election amid a backdrop of institutional and political chaos.
On Wednesday, November 13, the prosecution requested a five-year ban on RN leader Marine Le Pen from running for public office, in her trial for charges of embezzling EU Parliament funds in a fake jobs scheme. This development has intensified the rhetoric from the RN, which had previously expressed support for Barnier during his appointment.
On the evening of Friday, November 15, a certain feverishness overcame the ministerial cabinets upon learning that Le Pen was making an appearance on TF1's evening news. They feared she was going to announce her intention to back a no-confidence vote against the government. She didn't. But she described the situation as a "revolting" indictment, which she felt was equivalent to asking for her "political death." This reaction revealed her party's longstanding anti-establishment tendencies, which were at odds with its efforts to attain normalization and respectability.
Beyond the political tactics – such as lighting a political counter-fire to make people forget her legal setbacks – Le Pen has to appease the frustration of her party's elected representatives. They feel frustrated because they have not been able to claim a budgetary victory, especially when the leader of the conservative Les Républicains (LR), Laurent Wauquiez, was able to clinch a supposed revaluation of pensions. RN lawmakers feel overlooked by a prime minister who has rejected their amendments. This is a significant shift from the summer courtesies when Barnier had rushed to call Le Pen to tell her that her party should not be excluded from the "republican arc," despite what his economy minister, Antoine Armand, had just asserted.
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