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'Extremely unpopular French PM Bayrou playing both sides' in a bid to push through austerity budget
FRANCE 24 English
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6 weeks ago
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00:00
Hello everyone, I'm François Picard.
00:12
It's a veteran politician's roll of the dice,
00:16
putting his minority government to the test of a confidence vote.
00:19
Centrist Prime Minister François Bayrou recalling France's parliament early on September 8th,
00:26
ahead of an almighty budget battle. Unions had called for massive strikes two days later on the 10th,
00:33
this against a spending plan that for now includes a major slash in benefits
00:37
and the elimination of two national holidays.
00:46
Our country is in danger because we are on the edge of over-indebtedness.
00:51
Over the past two decades, despite the succession of several governments of different political leanings,
00:56
our national debt has increased by two trillion euros.
01:06
France cannot ignore this danger. It cannot stand idly by.
01:10
It is heading for disaster if it does not take the courageous but still possible and bearable decisions
01:15
that are necessary and that we are debating.
01:18
The far left and the far right quick to state that they will vote to bring that minority government down.
01:31
For more, let's cross to France 24's Catherine Norris-Trent.
01:36
All that's left to know is whether the socialists will push the vote of no confidence
01:42
above the magic number in the French parliament, 289.
01:48
That's right. We've been trying to do some quick parliamentary maths here in France.
01:53
And the situation is so divided in French politics that no party or bloc of parties has an overall majority.
02:01
So it's a real headache has been for Emmanuel Macron, his prime minister,
02:04
to try and get a government in place and getting any kind of legislation passed is a huge headache,
02:11
as we're seeing now.
02:12
So in terms of being able to win a confidence vote,
02:15
it's going to come down to the line, it looks like.
02:18
Marine Le Pen's party on the far right, the national rally,
02:22
she's already said she is not voting for confidence.
02:26
And their leader, Jordan Bardella, saying the same thing.
02:28
They won't vote through this confidence vote.
02:32
Then on the left, you've got the far left, La France Insoumise France unbowed.
02:36
They've come out already and said they're not voting for it.
02:39
It has the communists, the Greens.
02:40
So we're down to a handful of MPs, really.
02:43
The Socialist Party among them, who are now among the smaller parties in the French Parliament.
02:49
And so how many will turn up?
02:51
How many will abstain?
02:53
It's going to be a pretty tight political battle, it seems.
02:56
François Beirut has put his neck and that of his government on the line
03:00
to try and get through the principle that France need to make sweeping budget cuts
03:06
to the tune of 44 billion euros.
03:09
It's not clear whether he can make that.
03:11
If he doesn't, his government will resign.
03:14
And then France, once again, will be in another round of political chaos.
03:19
At 74, François Beirut has been a mainstay of French politics for decades.
03:24
This hobby horse of fiscal responsibility, as he puts it,
03:30
is something he's been talking about for a long time.
03:32
Tell us about the mood when he, again, made this roll of the dice announcing this vote of confidence.
03:42
Yeah, it was a pretty dramatic speech that he gave today, especially by his standards.
03:48
He's usually quite an affable, seen as an affable politician.
03:51
But he had a very grave tone and he spoke about the proportions of France's debt being a serious threat
03:59
which weighs upon France.
04:01
And talking again and again about French families,
04:04
using that as a metaphor for how no one would let them get themselves so indebted.
04:09
And at the end, wrapping up by saying we must think of France's children.
04:13
We cannot leave them with a situation, with such a situation of crushing debt, hanging over them.
04:20
So he was really trying to make the case, I think, appeal to French citizens,
04:24
not just the political parties we've been talking about,
04:27
but calling on French citizens to take their responsibility
04:29
and see that the hour is grave, the hour is serious.
04:34
He also, I think, was trying to get in before ahead of a movement,
04:39
protest movements which were planned for the 10th of September.
04:43
You know, there'd been calls for strikes to block the whole of France.
04:46
Clearly, he wants to get in there first and he's throwing down the gauntlet in this gamble.
04:51
Now we've just got to wait and see whether the French public have been listening
04:54
and whether this will pay off.
04:56
Catherine Norris-Trent reporting live there.
04:58
For more, let's go to the village of Cotignac in southern France.
05:02
It's Renaud Foucard, a senior lecturer in economics at the Lancaster University's management school.
05:09
Thank you for being with us here on France 24.
05:12
Hello, good evening.
05:14
What was your reaction when you heard François Bayrou, again, as Catherine just said,
05:19
trying to get ahead of the game by announcing this recall of parliament
05:24
and this vote of confidence?
05:26
This is his moment.
05:29
Bayrou is the man of fighting the public debt in France.
05:33
He's been talking about that forever.
05:35
And this is the moment when he's pushing his agenda and he comes up by saying,
05:38
I'm open.
05:39
The only thing I want to do is those 44 billions of savings.
05:43
Please make me suggestions.
05:45
And his bet, originally, that has been successful since the beginning,
05:48
is to say, I'm open to the far right and to the social democrats
05:52
and I'm willing to make concessions so that nobody dares to vote against him
05:56
because they hope to get something in exchange.
05:59
This time, it seems, and I find it quite surprising,
06:02
that Le Pen is willing to try to make him fall,
06:05
meaning that it's now a one-to-one between Bayrou and the social democrats.
06:09
And he has things to offer them.
06:10
They have a good relationship.
06:12
Bayrou called personally to vote for François Hollande
06:14
when he was against Nicolas Sarkozy for the presidential election.
06:18
And he has some very visible policy, like cancelling two days of holiday
06:23
and replacing them by work.
06:25
This is something you could easily give up
06:26
and give an easy win to the social democrats.
06:29
So there is a chance, but this really goes to the wire,
06:32
including with some small centrist party
06:34
when you have a lot of people who are joking for position
06:37
for the next presidential election in two years' time.
06:40
And those people are very, very careful about their moves now.
06:43
I don't really understand what Le Pen is doing.
06:45
I think the social democrats will be very, very tight in their negotiation.
06:49
But if I had to put my money somewhere,
06:51
I would say he has a good chance of going through.
06:53
So if you're Marine Le Pen, you're looking ahead to 2027,
06:56
which is the big prize, the French presidential election.
07:00
And what better way to be unpopular than if there is a snap election
07:04
and the national rally then has to govern,
07:07
which is something they wouldn't have to do until then.
07:11
Yes.
07:12
And also they have the possibility that the way the French constitution works
07:15
is that they don't have to vote for by rule.
07:18
They just have to abstain and not show up and it goes through.
07:21
And also we also know that Marine Le Pen, as from now,
07:23
is not allowed to run at the next presidential election.
07:26
So it would have been to be a Barbella prime minister.
07:30
And you know that being a presidential candidate
07:32
as the prime minister in France is generally a recipe for disaster.
07:36
They don't manage to do that
07:37
because you have to be in charge of all those unpopular things.
07:40
So I think it's a bit crazy.
07:41
So I think Le Pen somehow is betting that the social democrats
07:44
will help by rule,
07:46
in which case she can be part of the people who are anti-establishment.
07:50
But there is a long queue now.
07:51
Like there will be this demonstration on September the 10th.
07:55
Everyone will be there.
07:56
Like the Greens, the Communists, France and Baud, Le Pen,
08:00
all those people together.
08:01
So it will be kind of a yellow jacket situation
08:04
in which I don't think you have so much to gain
08:06
from being among the general opposition.
08:09
And there is a very clear, sweet spot to take
08:11
as the reasonable centre-left person
08:14
who has been in responsibility,
08:16
but who will still sing a different tune than Macron
08:18
in the next presidential election.
08:20
Now, there's 26 other members of the European Union.
08:23
They're looking in.
08:24
They see France's huge public deficit,
08:27
which ballooned after COVID.
08:30
What do you think that Brussels is going to make of it?
08:33
What do you think the European Central Bank
08:34
is going to make of it?
08:36
Well, right now, I think Bayrou is, again,
08:39
a relatively wise person in the sense
08:41
that he's seen as trying to make an effort.
08:44
There will be, I think, some kind of mild panic
08:46
if it's not Bayrou.
08:48
If it's someone, like, you know,
08:49
there are a lot of people now in France
08:50
who are in complete denial
08:52
and say that there is nothing to do with the public finance.
08:55
So they might be right in some point
08:56
that Bayrou is taking a very grave tone of voice.
09:00
And France, in terms of, like, you know,
09:02
macroeconomic basics,
09:03
they are a country that still sell
09:05
a lot of things around the world.
09:06
The basics are still OK.
09:08
And France is not on the verge of collapse.
09:10
But still, there is a big structural problem of debt.
09:13
And if you replace Macron by Bayrou
09:15
by someone who is not willing to make,
09:18
to acknowledge the problem,
09:19
you might start to have a panic.
09:21
And clearly, not only the European Union,
09:23
but financial markets, bonds.
09:24
This is, if the cost of the debt starts to explode
09:27
because nobody wants to buy French debt,
09:30
Le Pen, Bardella, whoever is in charge,
09:32
will be in double level of trouble
09:33
as compared to Bayrou.
09:35
You mentioned earlier the yellow vests movement,
09:38
which began as a protest against a carbon tax
09:41
that was scrapped.
09:43
And it came from rural areas,
09:45
people who need their car to get to work.
09:48
Among those who are striking are taxi drivers
09:51
for this upcoming September 10th day.
09:54
Is it really, is there really this chance
09:57
that it could be some kind of a yellow vest movement?
10:00
Or is it different this time?
10:02
The big difference is that there is no easy thing
10:05
to give for Bayrou.
10:07
So Macron, and this is one of the reasons,
10:08
by the way, where there is a structural problem now,
10:11
is that the fact that Macron had to cut
10:13
the taxation of carbon is one of the reasons
10:16
behind the deficit.
10:17
But here, what can Bayrou give
10:19
to a totally heteroclique amount of demonstrators?
10:24
What is the obvious thing to give?
10:25
Maybe those two days again,
10:26
but this is the same kind of thing
10:27
he could bargain with the social democrats.
10:29
The truth is that Bayrou is understanding
10:32
the fact that the voters in France
10:34
are largely older people.
10:36
The main reason, besides the lack of carbon tax
10:38
for the French deficit,
10:40
is aging population and the level of pensions in France.
10:43
He's not going to cut that.
10:44
He doesn't want to lose the little support he has.
10:48
And so there is nothing easy, obvious,
10:50
to give to demonstrators.
10:51
But people being angry is still something very dangerous.
10:54
It's just not that clear to me who would benefit that.
10:57
Maybe Le Pen, but maybe somebody else.
10:59
Stay with us, Renoufouca,
11:00
because you mentioned those two holiday days
11:04
and you bill them as perhaps the low-hanging fruit
11:06
in the negotiation.
11:08
Brian Quinn has more on that.
11:09
As the French public braces for a rocky fall political season,
11:16
the prospect of losing two paid holidays
11:18
appears to hold little appeal.
11:21
On principle, it seems pretty unfair to me.
11:24
These are days intended for rest and enjoyment,
11:27
off of work.
11:28
I understand the need to make cuts and find money,
11:32
but there is absolutely no social justice in this plan.
11:36
Recent polling shows 84% of French people
11:39
are against the government's plan,
11:41
even if they do accept the need
11:42
to reduce the country's budget deficit.
11:45
I don't like the idea of leaving a lot of public debt
11:48
for my kids.
11:49
We have two war remembrance days.
11:52
Why not just get rid of one in May?
11:54
That seems appropriate to me.
11:55
France is far from the European champion
11:59
of paid days off,
12:00
that record held by Cyprus with 15 days a year.
12:04
Spain and a handful of Balkan states have 14,
12:07
with Portugal, Austria, Poland,
12:09
and most of the Baltics close behind at 13.
12:12
Under the new proposal,
12:13
France's nine holidays would put it
12:15
at the bottom of the list,
12:16
tied with Germany, Denmark, and the Netherlands.
12:19
France's small business lobby says
12:21
that if the reform goes through,
12:23
it must apply to everyone, even kids.
12:28
Public services have to be open,
12:29
particularly schools.
12:31
If schools are closed,
12:33
that's obviously a big problem.
12:36
Our employees can't come to work
12:37
because they have to watch their kids.
12:40
The country's top seven labor federations,
12:43
all of whom oppose the plan,
12:45
are set to meet September 1st
12:46
to plan their next steps.
12:48
The government is hoping the move
12:49
will bring 4.2 billion euros a year
12:52
into its coffers starting in 2026.
12:55
Economists, though, say a 2% wealth tax
12:58
on the country's richest families,
13:00
those with more than 100 million euros in net worth,
13:03
would bring in 15 to 25 billion per year.
13:06
Renaud Foucault, we heard in that report
13:09
that woman talking about
13:12
the need for social justice.
13:16
What percentage of the French
13:17
do you see agreeing with her?
13:20
I think most people,
13:22
the moment François Barreau started to talk about that,
13:25
he said,
13:26
the French don't work enough,
13:27
we need two more days of work.
13:28
Very few people, me the first,
13:30
believed he was going to talk about unpaid days.
13:32
So if the idea was to pay people
13:34
and to grow the economy
13:35
and to have taxes paid, yes.
13:37
But no, I think everyone agrees with the lady
13:39
that it's a bad idea
13:40
to squeeze the working people even more.
13:43
But the alternative
13:44
is what led to the fall of Barnier's government.
13:46
The alternative is to decrease
13:48
the highest pension in France.
13:50
Now, very, very high pension
13:51
for some people receiving
13:52
3,000, 4,000 euros a month.
13:54
This is something that is also a taboo.
13:57
And a later age of pension
13:59
has thrown thousands and thousands
14:00
of people in the street.
14:01
So people are very, very much willing
14:03
to demonstrate against one specific cut.
14:06
What Barreau is telling them is,
14:08
OK, I'm open, help me pick something.
14:11
And the something has to be somebody else
14:13
than the working people.
14:14
One final question for you.
14:16
We saw François Barreau last year
14:19
elbow Emmanuel Macron
14:21
after the previous government fell
14:24
under Michel Barnier saying,
14:26
hey, give it to me or else.
14:28
He's prime minister now.
14:29
This position he'd been coveting for decades.
14:32
How's he doing?
14:34
I think given that his own objective,
14:37
I assume, is to be the one
14:39
who will save France from the debt,
14:41
he's been extremely intelligent.
14:43
So the big problem of Barnier
14:44
is that he was only trying
14:46
to get a deal with the far right.
14:47
So he became a nostalgia of Le Pen.
14:50
She played with him.
14:51
And when she was tired,
14:52
she just killed the government.
14:53
Bayrou has been very clever,
14:55
playing both sides.
14:56
He's extremely unpopular.
14:57
And I think he just wants to go to bed,
15:00
go to history as someone
15:01
who did something good for France.
15:03
If he falls, of course,
15:04
with this vote of no confidence,
15:06
if France goes to chaos,
15:07
then I will have to change my answer.
15:08
If he actually managed to be the one
15:10
who gives the key of France in 2027
15:13
to someone who will have a lower deficit,
15:16
then I think he will be very proud of himself,
15:18
although he will definitely remain
15:20
very, very unpopular.
15:22
Ronald Foucault,
15:23
so many thanks for joining us
15:24
from southern France.
15:25
Thank you so much.
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