France: What you need to know about the political crisis • FRANCE 24 English

France: What you need to know about the political crisis • FRANCE 24 English

Coming here to France where this Monday will be a big day in French politics. Prime Minister Francois Bau faces a confidence vote in the National Assembly which he is expected to lose. French President Emanuel Macron will then need to name a new prime minister, the third within the past year, though he could also choose to step down or dissolve parliament and call once again for new elections. Byru’s downfall was sparked by opposition to his austerity budget with France facing an endofear deadline to pass a new budget for next year. For some insight into all of this, we can speak to Richard Veri, correspondent and columnist for Swiss Paper Blick. Uh Richard, good to talk to you. Thank you so much for taking the time. Good morning. Uh first, what’s your general feeling going into this vote tomorrow? Do you find that there’s any suspense at all? Well, if you listen to observers, if you read the media, there is no suspense at all. I mean, it’s been done. Franu will lose the confidence that he requested himself from the national assembly. A majority of the deputy will vote against his government and in the minutes to come he will have to go to the el palace and present his resignation to president M. A survival of president of prime minister by government would be indeed a political miracle but it’s very very unlikely that it will happen this way. And so assuming that he loses this vote, what do you think is going to happen next? Well, there are actually three possibilities. The first possibility once Franceu has presented his resignation to the prime to the president is that Emanuel Macron decide to nominate a new prime minister. He can do so. And this new prime minister can even be Franceu himself. though uh uh he he said several times that he will not ask to be renominated. That’s the first option. Then the new prime minister will have to find a majority for his budget because there is still a budget to come. The budget has to come in front of the National Assembly at the latest on the second Tuesday of October or the first Tuesday of October. So that’s that’s the first option. The second option is dissolving the National Assembly. Dissolving the National Assembly would mean that President Mron gears to new legislative election that would be highly risky for him knowing that he has one year and a half for his mandate to go. And there is a third option is to choose a prime minister outside of the political field to go for a technician, someone who has no political color, someone who can pretend to be there only to run the government, to run the country. uh but still the budget question will be there but having a technician in position of prime minister may permit Emanuel Macron to escape the difficulty of having a majority and so of those options what do you think is the most likely is it that third one that you were just mentioning I think Emman would be certainly tempted by nominated a high civil servant or a technician as prime minister but that’s not what the political parties want the political ical parties still want politician to run the show. So it’s going to be difficult for Emanuel Mron to convince them and to make them accept the fact that they lose the grip on power. So clearly speaking I think he will be forced to find someone in the political field from one of the political party. Uh he has two possibilities there. Either he stick to the central right what Mr. by who was actually coming from or he goes to the left to the social democrat letting them trying to form a government and to find either a majority or at least a no confidence pact meaning that uh meaning that the all the parties all the concerned parties will accept not to vote against the new government as you see that is very risky it is a razor line that President Mron is walking in at the moment This all started or the most recent rather round of of political chaos sort of started over this budget issue. Some economists say you know France’s budget problems and debt problems aren’t quite as bad as making them out to be. What’s your take on on how you know on France’s financial situation? But if you look at France from a European point of view, well, if you take into account what happened in other countries in the European Union, Italy, Spain, Greece in the past, France has a budgetary problem. It has a serious budgetary problem. It has a depth amounting to 3,400 billion euro, which is around 170% of its GDP. uh it has a deficit running around uh 5.4% a public deficit. So it cannot go this way. It cannot continue. The state has to save cost and save money and that’s what Franabu was proposing with a budget with 44 million euros of cuts. So is that figure the correct one? Should we go for something like 30 30 million instead of 44? There is probably a room of negotiation. It is possible. But France has to show a way. It has to show a convincing track from the European Commission. The European Commission wants France to cut its public expenses. And I think the next government will not escape the fact that it has to cut cost once again. What is the room for negotiation? The socialist believe they can go down up to 20 million rather than 44 million. I think it’s probably too less. So we will end up with a figure around 30 million and it will be very difficult to accept for a number of political parties in parliament. At the moment the new prime minister probably can count on around 230 deputies among 577. You can see this is clearly not a majority. Meanwhile, there’s been a viral online campaign calling to shut down the country with protests on Wednesday, September 10th. It’s called Broken 2 or Block Everything and it’s been described as sort of a yellow vest 2.0. What’s your sense of who might participate in that movement and do you think it’s going to have big turnout? Well, you’ve got two social rendevu that the new government will have to be very careful about. But maybe President Mron will wait a bit before nominating a new prime minister. The first date is the one you mentioned this week on Wednesday the 10 of September. The blockade all the slogan has come mainly from social networks, mainly from activists, from groups who have links with the radical left. Luke himself, the leader of the radical left, he has endorsed this day of blockade on the on the 10 of September. So what we might see is initiatives that are not expected. I would not be surprised if railway stations are blocked, if highways are blocked, if some streets of Paris are block are blocked. That is the kind of thing that we may see and it might it might bring some kind of violence because people will get surprised. people will go to work and will certainly not accept it. And then you have a second social rendevu which is more organized which is uh at the appeal of the trade unions. It is for the 18th of September. Then it’s a strike. It’s a general strike in public service. So you have a week of tensions between the 10 of September and the 18th of September. The question is there whether Emanuel Mron will wait and will keep Franuis for the moment on on government running what we call the affair or will he try to replace the prime minister as as soon as possible precisely to diffuse the social tension. It’s going to be an interesting couple of weeks coming up here in France. Richard, I’m sure I’m sure will come back on air commenting on France and the situation is not good either politically or socially. Yeah, we’re we’re planning to speak to you quite a bit in the coming weeks. Richard Verley, thank you so much as always. That’s Richard Verley, correspondent and columnist for the Swiss paper Blick.

France is under acute pressure to fix its finances. Saying tough decisions were needed, Bayrou, a veteran centre-right politician and Macron’s fourth prime minister since Macron’s re-election, sought to pass a budget for 2026 that would require 44 billion euros ($51.51 billion) in savings, including pension freezes, healthcare cuts, and the scrapping of two public holidays. This provoked an outcry from opponents. Unable to see a path to adoption, Bayrou called a confidence vote on his fiscal strategy, in a gamble the opposition called political suicide. Analysis by Richard Werly, international correspondent at Blick.
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