Two no-confidence motions against the French government

• Frank Renout

  correspondent France

The French opposition proposes a vote of no confidence against the government of President Macron. Both the left and right opposition do, but they are unlikely to have a majority together.

The reason is the government’s decision tonight to put the parliament aside. The budget for next year will be adopted without a vote, Prime Minister Borne announced. The constitution offers the possibility to do this in exceptional cases.

According to the prime minister, the opposition has tabled thousands of amendments that would make the budget process too long. Furthermore, the opposition had already announced that it would vote against it anyway. Collaboration was therefore impossible, according to Borne. “We have been loyal and have studied all the proposals,” he said. “We have tried in vain to make it through compromise and dialogue”.

The radical left-wing party LFI immediately announced that it would present the motion of no confidence. “The government is taking the hard way. President Macron is becoming authoritarian,” said LFI faction leader Mathilde Panot.

“We will come tomorrow with our vote of no confidence,” said MP Jean Philippe Tanguy of Marine Le Pen’s RN party.

This creates a strange scenario in parliament. The radical left LFI has already said it will not vote for the radical right RN motion, and RN has said the same for the LFI motion.

There is another large opposition party, the right-wing Les Républicains. But they probably don’t want to vote for either of the two motions. If the government is sent home, there will likely be new elections and Les Républicains fear they will lose a lot.

The government of President Macron, which does not have a majority in parliament, will thus survive the no-confidence motions because the opposition parties are divided.

But the government can be accused of knocking out parliament. He is seen by many French as if Macron did not care about democratic mores.

The left-wing opposition points out that in recent weeks it has also put workers on strike in oil refineries back to work with injunctions. According to the unions, this violates the right to strike, but last week the judge ruled that the injunctions were legitimate.