The French prime minister went to the presidential palace to announce his resignation to .
According to article 50 of the French Constitution, after a vote of impeachment by the National Assembly (Parliament), “the prime minister must submit to the president of the Republic the resignation of the government”.
Emmanuel Macron is going to address the French today at 20:00 (9 Greek time).
Information in the French media reports that the French president. In this case, he will be the fourth prime minister in a row that France has known this year.
The big question is whether the new prime minister will manage to have a different fate than that of Michel Barnier and especially whether France will be able to have the 2025 state budget ready before the expiration of 2024.
It is recalled that this resignation comes with 331 votes on the day that would complete three months in the prime ministership.
How did the French press react?
Awaiting the evening speech, today’s French press welcomed yesterday’s approval by the National Assembly of the motion of censure against the government with a reflection on what will happen “the next day”.
In an article entitled “Macron returns to the center of the political scene”, the newspaper Le Monde notes that France is currently in a complete vacuum, with many calling for the French president to resign and with the National Assembly unable to approve the 2025 budget.
“Macron has no right to make a mistake”
The newspaper said the government toppling was a tragic setback for Macron who had repeatedly justified the June 9 dissolution of Parliament by wanting to avoid impeachment against the government “in the autumn, in the middle of the budget”. He also points out that the French president, who has been in the background since the autumn, is again in the center of the game, since he has to appoint a prime minister. “He has no right to make a mistake and knows he must move quickly to prevent calls for resignation and a sense of a power vacuum to flourish, even though the budget has not been approved,” the newspaper underlines.
Finally, the newspaper reports that the major problem of the French president is whether he will continue to appoint prime ministers close to his own political space or whether he will open to the left, taking into account the result of the second round of the last parliamentary elections that brought her first in seats.
Along the same lines, the financial newspaper Les Echos notes that Macron is again in the front line, as he was on the night of the parliamentary elections on July 7, but also that this time he is obliged to appoint a prime minister quickly if he wants to avoid a very long period of uncertainty. He notes that the French president does not have in his hands the paper to dissolve the National Assembly, in which no faction has an absolute majority, and that his room for maneuver is therefore limited.
The potential suitors
As for the possible candidates for the position of prime minister, the newspaper mentions those that are more or less circulating in all the French media, such as the Minister of Defense Sebastien Lecorny, the centrist MP Francois Bayroux, the socialist Bernard Gazneve, etc.
European press: “Chaos” and “uncertainty”
“Chaos”, “great uncertainty”, “the worst political crisis” that French President Emmanuel Macron has experienced: the European press was worried this morning after the fall of Michel Barnier’s government, which he describes as a “leap into the void” for France.
“It’s easier to (re)build Notre-Dame than a budget,” quipped the Berlin newspaper Tagesspiegel.
“Fall of the French government: everyone points the finger at everyone else. France is again in the same place as it was this summer: coalitions and compromises do not make a positive impression, it is always the fault of the others” — the Berlin newspaper exemplifies the lack of compromise culture of the French political class.
“The system of the 5th Republic out of breath?” asks the German centre-left newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung.
“A shadow before the sun of the Republic: the political chaos in France is due to a serious error of the president. The solution must come from Emmanuel Macron himself. Otherwise there’s not much chance of that happening,” he adds.
A finding shared by the main article of the Spanish newspaper El Pais: “the real person responsible for the carnage is Macron, who (…) appointed a conservative prime minister from a minority and dying party, believing that this would facilitate the implementation of unpopular forced meters”.
“The President’s Blindness”
“The president’s blindness is at this stage unwarranted, given the institutional crisis his decisions have caused. It is also systemically dangerous for France because of the difficult, if not impossible, budget equation that the future government, whatever its form, will have to face,” insists El Pais in its editorial, while La Vanguardia is headlined “Barnier falls and France leaps into the void”.
In Britain, the leftist newspaper The Guardian estimates that “Emmanuel Macron is facing the worst political crisis in his two terms”.
The (conservative) Times highlights the calls for resignation that are now aimed at the president of the Republic. “This storm leaves Macron (…) accused of leading France into a period of turmoil that risks undermining its constitution,” the paper added.
In Italy, the fall of the Barnier government is the first topic in all the newspapers: “Chaos in France, the government falls”, is the headline of the largest circulation newspaper Il Corriere della Sera, while La Repubblica writes “France, a slap in the face to Macron”.
For the La Stampa columnist, this political crisis demonstrates that “Western representative democracies are struggling, not because of an incident, but for structural reasons.”
“We are watching the deep and not ephemeral protest of important sections of public opinion that have been abandoned by oligarchic and self-referential leaders,” Giovanni Orsina estimates.
This situation “occurs at a time when the European Union needs France the most”, writes the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter, which is concerned about the “government crises that follow one another at a frantic pace in the countries with special burden on the European Union”.
For Libre Belgique, which speaks of “a period of great uncertainty”, the fall of the Barnier government is worrying, mainly in economic terms.
“Only French stocks are already suffering from this wilting. When it comes to government bonds, the outlook may turn dire,” according to the center-right newspaper’s editorial.
