- 6 months ago
As Europe goes back to school, it already had plenty on its plate. Now – on top of inflation, extreme weather, the AI race, Russian threats and a no-longer-so-friendly United States, it's got a new worry: France.
After last year's baffling dissolution that resulted in a hung parliament, the French prime minister's now got six days to convince the opposition parties that hold his fate in their hands that he was right to preempt a raucous showdown over his austerity budget and call a vote of confidence next Monday. Like with Emmanuel Macron a year ago, François Bayrou didn’t have to put his neck on the line. But he did. And if all goes to script next Monday, the centrist 74-year-old mainstay of French politics will have to make way for Macron's fifth prime minister since his re-election in 2022. Why the seemingly self-inflicted crisis? What are the president's options? The far left and far right want the term-limited Macron to resign. Is it about the man or the system? Next week’s vote is only the start of it. Trade unions have latched onto a Yellow Vests-style day of action called for September 10. Where it will lead? It's hard to say, in a nation where critics quip that citizens prefer revolution to reform. We ask about a country that fared better than most during Covid but never shut the tap after on stimulus spending. Rising borrowing costs on French debt show that for markets and jittery neighbours, it's time to pay the piper. Produced by François Picard, Alessandro Xenos, Juliette Laffont, Ilayda Habip, Charles Wente.
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After last year's baffling dissolution that resulted in a hung parliament, the French prime minister's now got six days to convince the opposition parties that hold his fate in their hands that he was right to preempt a raucous showdown over his austerity budget and call a vote of confidence next Monday. Like with Emmanuel Macron a year ago, François Bayrou didn’t have to put his neck on the line. But he did. And if all goes to script next Monday, the centrist 74-year-old mainstay of French politics will have to make way for Macron's fifth prime minister since his re-election in 2022. Why the seemingly self-inflicted crisis? What are the president's options? The far left and far right want the term-limited Macron to resign. Is it about the man or the system? Next week’s vote is only the start of it. Trade unions have latched onto a Yellow Vests-style day of action called for September 10. Where it will lead? It's hard to say, in a nation where critics quip that citizens prefer revolution to reform. We ask about a country that fared better than most during Covid but never shut the tap after on stimulus spending. Rising borrowing costs on French debt show that for markets and jittery neighbours, it's time to pay the piper. Produced by François Picard, Alessandro Xenos, Juliette Laffont, Ilayda Habip, Charles Wente.
Visit our website:
http://www.france24.com
Like us on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/FRANCE24.English
Follow us on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/France24_en
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00:00it's back to school in Europe with plenty to fret about both near and far now Europe's got a new
00:08worry France after last year's shock dissolution of parliament begat a hung parliament the clock
00:15ticking for a prime minister who's now got six days to convince resolute opposition parties that
00:20he was right to preempt a raucous showdown over a painful austerity budget and call a vote of
00:26confidence scheduled for next Monday like with Emmanuel Macron a year ago François Bayrou was
00:32under no obligation to put his neck on the line but he did and if all goes to script next Monday
00:38the centrist Bayrou a mainstay of French politics for decades will have to pack and make way for
00:44Macron's fifth prime minister since his re-election in 2022 why this seemingly self-inflicted crisis
00:52what are the president's options the far left and far right want the term limited Macron to resign
00:57is it about the man or the system next week's vote only the start of it trade unions have latched on
01:04to a yellow vest style day of action called for September the 10th where will that lead maybe
01:11nowhere but it's anyone's guess in a nation where stereotypes would have citizens preferring
01:15revolution to reform France fared better than most during COVID but never did shut the tap on stimulus spending
01:22rising borrowing costs mean that whatever politicians decide next it is now for the markets time to pay the piper
01:30today in the France 24 debate should Europe worry about France and with us French member of parliament
01:37Claire Lejeune from LFI the left-wing France unbound party nice to be here thanks for being with us
01:42thanks as well to Denis Barranger professor of public law at the university
01:46Panthéon Assas good to see you hello thank you and you're writing working on a book on
01:51under dissolution on the first dissolution of 2024 of 2024
01:55with us as well Damien Lecomte political science researcher at Paris Panthéon
02:01Sorbonne University thank you for joining us thank you for meeting me and a columnist and strategist
02:07senior advisor at communications agency NoCom how are you hi good okay reminder by the way you can
02:15always listen that's right listen to the France 24 debate wherever podcasts are streamed overheard on
02:22French radio this morning is this a Liz Truss moment her 45-day tenure as UK prime minister
02:29precipitated by an unexpected massive tax cut that she announced sent the British pound tumbling and she
02:36was soon out it's an expression here to what with French borrowing costs hitting a 14-year high
02:43analysts insist it's not about France's massive public deficit but it's about the political instability
02:52uh the uh uh rising uh debt those pundits saying that for now uh it's it's uh it's not yet a Liz Truss
03:03moment uh Philippe Bonchevrolet but is it is it close to that because Liz Truss didn't have to
03:10announce this big tax cut and it backfired miserably and she was out of a job that's pretty much the same
03:17thing François Bayreau didn't have to you know decide that on September 8th there would be a vote
03:23in the parliament against him that's most probably what will happen he didn't have to do that why did
03:28he do it that's you know that's that's a question we all ask ourselves why did he do it uh there are
03:35three main hypotheses the first one is he wants to get out of this situation um you know with a high
03:42profile with the ability of saying uh I told you so you know saving preserving his own image is one
03:49possibility that's the first one the second possibility is that he wants to be a candidate for
03:5420 27 for the next presidential election so he will be out but it will have be the one if you'll have
04:00been the one fighting against the budget spending he will be the candidate for the conservatives it
04:06could be a second hypothesis and the third one is that he expects maybe to win and he sees the
04:13possibility that no one except him sees including MPs in his own rank and fights have the political
04:22fault lines changed in any kind of way since that announcement no I wouldn't say
04:30they have I mean very early we said we would not vote for confidence and fairly quickly afterwards
04:37most opposition parties said more or less the same thing but maybe it's important to remind that
04:43actually for a government that's in power the normal thing to do is to ask for the confidence
04:48and the abnormality is that governments have been minority governments and have not asked for the
04:57confidence from parliament so in a way it was the right thing to do and um in a in a way also he knew
05:05that we he was going to face a major opposition when wanting to pass to pass through this budget and he
05:11probably would have fallen anyway with a vote of no no confidence a bit uh a bit further down the line
05:18so I'd say asking the parliament do you support me or do you not support me is the normal thing to do
05:25in a normal democracy but I think this brings us back to the conversation about is it just to
05:31what they are trying to portray as a fiscal crisis or are we on in a system crisis a democratic crisis
05:37a political crisis which brings us back to the position of Macron and the fact that there's a
05:43disconnect between the policies he wants to impose and what the majority of French people want nowadays
05:50you you you you say the normal thing to do were you nonetheless surprised
05:55um I don't think anyone expected it from him um but I think uh he knew that he wouldn't be staying for long
06:05so it's his way maybe of trying to save some kind of image and to go down in history as a person
06:12who would have said the truth uh to the French people that's what he's saying but what's important to say is that
06:18what he's portraying as the truth is very honestly a bunch of uh sometimes lies about the level of debt
06:28comparing French situation to the Greek situation there's no comparison possible between the Greek
06:35and the French situation using exaggerations that have no legitimacy trying to uh to feed into fears
06:43and to get people on board by kind of saying right the IMF is going to come down tomorrow and France is going to be
06:51uh in uh in chaos that's that's not reality and it's not very honest to portray it in this way because
06:57it cuts the possibility of an honest democratic debate and I think French people are expecting that from us
07:03more than anything else
07:04all right the the France part of the eurozone they have uh uh three percent of uh the debt should not be more than three percent of uh uh of uh uh uh the size of GDP in France it's double that um yet in the how to make friends and influence people department in trying to make his pitch to the French people
07:24the 74-year-old prime minister appeared to alienate both old and young when he called for budgetary belt tightening in the name of the younger generation
07:34they're the victims they're the ones that will have to pay the debt for their entire lives and we've convinced them that we needed to increase it more isn't that great
07:46all this for the comfort of certain political parties and for the comfort of boomers as they're called
07:52who from this vantage point feel that everything is just fine
07:56there's been a lot of chatter about les boomers Damien Lecomte as the the French call them uh since since uh since uh since that vote uh by the way i'm i'm officially under the limit by one year so i'm not a boomer just so you know
08:11Damien Lecomte is here
08:12oh sorry excuse me i said Damien Lecomte i meant Denis Barranger uh the the the what did you make of that statement
08:20uh and and and again uh what does that tell you about François Bayrou in this moment
08:25well to come back to the discussion about Liz Truss Truss was confident she would stay on
08:30and really she was toppled by the market backlash because of her poor um policy decisions
08:36uh they're always very different he's been a prime minister in name only he hasn't really governed
08:41he hasn't had a coalition uh his cabinet minister didn't even know he would ask for the confident vote
08:48uh next week what did he do as a prime minister what what is actually his program we don't really know
08:56and we still don't so i guess Philippe has laid out the reasons why the scenarios why he has resigned we
09:02don't know because we are not in his own brain but probably he did that because of the budget horizon
09:06and he wants to appear as uh the reasonable man uh the the adult in in the room uh it's not for me to tell
09:15i'm not an economist but it seems many people would think that his act his program to
09:19um fight the deficit is quite imbalanced uh we have like 100 millions uh structural deficits 83
09:29millions are caused by the um policy of macron politique de l'offre there was not a thing to do if
09:36you wanted to balance budget you would take money from business and take money from uh um middle class
09:43because he he he both cut taxes uh and at the same time uh i'm not an economist i'm not doing
09:50party politics but he's really hit the middle class households how will it go for him politically
09:56time will tell uh denise barger you said he didn't may build a coalition could he have
10:03could he have tried or is france people say oh no we don't do coalitions golden rule the golden rule
10:08of a parliamentary government like in the uk is that you start by building a majority and then
10:14you become the obvious prime minister mr mr mr macron has done the reverse he's done that in reverse
10:19gear he wanted to choose someone from his own team like uh monsieur lecornu that sort of people who had
10:26no majority at all and then beirut told him if you don't take me i'm going to leave you and then
10:32you'll be left in the wild without a majority at all but mr beru has never even tried to have
10:38majority in parliament so now he's leaving because he's never had a majority and to be honest why
10:43didn't he try that's a good question i think most prime ministers see themselves now i as would-be
10:50presidents he's been a would-be president all the time like like mr barnier and they see themselves as
10:56predecessors as as their predecessors like michelle de bray people from the fifth republic who are
11:01supported by a president they didn't need a majority because the president had a majority
11:05they behave like that and in their brain in their own mind they behave as people from the early days
11:12the happy days of the fifth republic these days are gone forever the fifth republic used to be robust
11:17it was very stable because there was still majority there the president had a majority in parliament
11:21and the prime minister was only uh the guy working for for for for glorified chief of staff
11:28absolutely the glorified chief of staff those days are gone unburied and mr beru is facing that
11:32damien lecomte when you saw this again the the the original sin that what denis book is about
11:39is this dissolution of parliament after uh poor showing in the european elections of in may of last
11:46year could there have been coalition building it was something that was promised in fact
11:51i do think the the original sin of this uh parliamentary term is the refusal of uh president
11:57emmanuel macron to uh acknowledge the victory of the republican front and the the victory of a new
12:04popular front the the left-wing coalition that was uh the the first uh political coalition inside the
12:10the republican front so you say a victory but it was if you tally up all of the left from the
12:17reformists to the hardliners you get a more than a third and that's that's not a majority but it
12:23was yes but the result of a snap election was a victory of the republican front against the far
12:28right uh because between the two rounds uh the the left wings and the the centrists uh were rallying
12:36against the the candidates in each district against the far right candidate and it is also a truth
12:42that the the left-wing alliance was uh the first political force inside this republican front so
12:47the most uh logic parliamentary logic solution was for the president to appoint uh left-wing
12:54government would uh that would have to reach compromises and to negotiate within parliament
13:00to to reach compromises with the the center with the the centrist coalition so it will it is the
13:06original scene of this legislative term that emmanuel macron did not appoint lucy casted the left-wing
13:11candidate for prime minister and after that michelle barnier uh tried to uh to mount uh to to lead a
13:18government uh that was dependent on uh the far right which was kind of a betrayal of the republican
13:23front on in the first place and it is dependent on the far right to what extent sorry dependent on
13:30the far right to because he did not try to to reach compromises with the left wing so it was uh so
13:35the only solution for him was to uh to rely on the abstention of the far right and so franco bayrou
13:40uh which is interesting is that franco bayrou has always prided himself as a centrist as a unifier
13:45someone who want to to work across the else across the political divisions but it is true that he has not
13:51shown a real willingness to uh to reach compromises with the left wing uh he did uh discuss with uh some
14:00parties of the left and the the greens of the communists and the socialists accepted to discuss
14:04with them but in the end only the socialists uh decided that they had obtained enough concessions
14:11to not vote against him for the the 20-25 budget but even them they had really a hard time to obtain
14:18any major concessions and franco bayrou did not respect most of them so he had not shown a real ability
14:26to uh to reach compromises inside the republican front all right one by one the last uh 48 hours
14:32politicians have been filing into the prime minister's office in the left bank of paris to see
14:37the uh perhaps outgoing prime minister uh the far right marine le pen whose national rally has the
14:43most seats in parliament uh calling the visit a courtesy call saying the real issue is not by who
14:48it's the man at the top
14:49the truth is that emmanuel macron's brand of politics is toxic it is applied by a certain
15:00number of ministers whether they're from the right the left or the center for us it matters
15:08little it isn't personal we don't hold grudges against anyone we've noticed that none of the prime
15:13ministers have been brave enough to cut ties with macronism she talks about macronism uh uh in that
15:23clip uh the far right like the far like the far left like your party is calling uh for the president
15:30to resign although she seemed to be sort of tempering that she didn't say that in that particular outing
15:36yes so it seems to me that the rassemblement national are calling more for a new dissolution
15:43that's their that's their primary goal um and indeed um bayrou's government was actually leaning to
15:50their their types of policies and also feeding into the racism that the national front rassemblement
15:58national actually harbors so the opposition between macronism and far right policies is actually
16:05much more blurred than it was when macronism first started and this is where we our diagnosis to say
16:12the heart of the crisis is indeed not at in the national assembly but at the elisee it's emmanuel
16:20macron because he's in a denial of the disconnect there is between his brand of policies and what the
16:29french have been consistently voting at the european elections and then at the legislative
16:35elections uh soon after that so if we don't tackle that issue then we can name another prime minister
16:42he'll probably fall after the next budget and we'll go from crisis to crisis if we don't look at the
16:48heart of this crisis which is a political crisis linked to the concentrated forms of power that are
16:56characteristic from the fifth the fifth republic so if we don't look this in the eye then we're gonna
17:02uh play into maybe what macron is expecting maybe another dissolution with the far right coming to
17:09power which is something that we managed to prevent but the french the french like strong leaders don't
17:15they uh the leader of your party once said uh i'm the state l'état c'est moi yeah and we also have macron
17:21who said that um the french people were actually nostalgic of the times that we had kings he said this yeah
17:27and so but i don't i don't think that's necessarily uh sociological political fact i think now there's
17:34a strong movement uh for more uh power that would be placed in the people's hand and more the people's
17:42hand does that mean parliament well we have the yellow vests they were calling for the rick the
17:47referendum who would actually give back power give back the voice to the people more regularly so more
17:54referendums yeah and now we have but that bypasses parliament as well you're a member of parliament
17:59exactly parliament is important but the people's voice is important as well and we what we've been
18:04seeing also is that the parliament's voice has been completely uh ignored by the minority governments
18:12that have been in place last uh last year we did our job as uh mps we were building a budget voting
18:21the amendments and then the bani that bani used article 49.3 and just put everything in the bin and
18:29just put back what they wanted to do turn turn the turn the budget battle into a vote of confidence yeah
18:35so in in this type of situation yes we've got to look at it and uh and see that we've got a deep
18:41democratic crisis and that the only way out of this i think is a regime change and going towards
18:49something like a sixth republic with more executive power or less less executive power you can't do
18:55much more than more executive power than what we've got currently and especially not in the way that
19:00macron is using the consta the constitution to think that until recently germany seems more unstable
19:08politically than france they have a new chancellor frédéric mertz who brought his government to the
19:12french riviera last friday for one of those joint cabinet meetings the two nations regularly stage to
19:17remind us that old enemies can then become best of friends working in tandem and after cool relations
19:24with mertz's predecessor olav schultz france's president promising a long life for this new
19:30buddy act as he dismissed calls to resign
19:35i believe in democracy democracy consists of people voting for a given mandate the mandate which has been
19:41given to me by the french people and by no one else is a mandate that will be carried out through the
19:47end of its term in accordance with the commitment i made to the french people even with all due respect
19:53to those who have been defeated several times in the same elections
19:57it's interesting philippe monchevole uh at a time when uh uh donald trump is stating
20:04i'm the president united states i can do whatever i want yes uh what do you make of that statement here
20:09he's saying it's that this is democracy and that he was elected and he's allowed to finish out his mandate
20:14uh your your thoughts on the statement that you saw there uh the good thing is that he what he puts
20:20forward is the uh frame the institution the rules is not putting himself ahead of the rules as long as
20:27that lasts we are in a better position and we are better suited than you americans with donald trump
20:33i'm sorry for you francois but that's that's that's the truth for the months to come at least uh we never
20:38know and uh the the the the good the very important thing that uh marine le pen did point out in what
20:44she said is that uh we need to cut ties with emmanuel macron collectively if we want to wield something
20:52else politically the candidates that will that won't cut ties with emmanuel macron will be doomed
20:59why because there are two populist forces um one on the left i won't insult you by saying which it is but
21:06there is a populist force on the left and there is a uh the rassemblement national reconquête a huge
21:11huge huge unbelievably strong far-right force uh on the right which is also populist and these two
21:18populist fronts are converging on some points such as you know they are pro-russian anti-vaccines
21:26a lot of things are converging between these two fronts and the moderates if they want to sustain
21:31themselves they have to pro to give the people something new they have to propose something new
21:38and they have to cut ties with emmanuel macron it's very difficult for edward philippe who was macron's
21:43prime minister to cut ties it's very difficult for gabriel et al who was also a macron's prime minister
21:49to cut ties these are potential candidates for 2027 candidates and what francois macron's term limited
21:55was always doing is making the situation even worse than was expected by saying to the people this is
22:02the end of the times we are dying the country is going to you know uh to the gutters we i'm the only
22:09one who can save this country from itself and with strict measures so no no positive perspective no
22:16solutions nothing but doom that's what he proposes ways so it's usually rejected by 80 percent 89 percent of
22:24the population do want to get rid of their prime minister so the situation is dire really though
22:30from the democratic perspective it's dire all right let's look at the makeup here by the way the last
22:34time a franco-german cabinet meeting was staged it was spring of 2024 just before macron dissolved
22:41parliament when he was just a few seats shy of a majority uh only for those snap elections to backfire
22:46as we said uh at 74 uh by who might be thinking about his legacy the country by the the and here you
22:54see uh what of the uh the fact that after that uh dissolution on july the 8th we saw that the uh macron's
23:03coalition shrank uh as a result so when you look at this pie chart uh denis baranger with
23:11if if you're going to try to build a coalition government old style uh how do you do it i don't
23:20know implicitly i mean the implicit reasoning in macron's talk um that we just heard is basically
23:29i've been democratically elected at universal suffrage so i should govern the country there is
23:36nothing self-evident with this the president of portugal the president of austria they're elected
23:41at universal suffrage they don't govern the country they leave that to a prime minister with a majority
23:47in parliament so macron's choice not to take madame castez could be understandable in the sense of madame
23:55castez she didn't she did not have a majority like you said but he had to find someone who who was able
24:02to reach across the air so you could have for instance uh uh i don't know how to say that in
24:08english but the people are governing right now sort of the middle ground middle ground who are actually
24:12in the part in yellow if you will the part in yellow and sky blue on the yellow the yellow guides
24:18on your chart they could have reached across the air to the socialists were quite open to
24:23some understanding on some so they could have chipped away at that red part on our on even before the
24:27dissolution it was very possible for macron on his prime minister at the time to have an agreement
24:33with les republicans on not going to the dissolution they there was nothing necessary for the dissolution
24:40he could have done that before the dissolution today is so blurred that actually i don't think anybody
24:46is going to come to the table or negotiate an agreement with anybody else so macron said he would not
24:52leave the elizé uh palace yeah because it's it's it's the end of 2025 the election's not till the
24:57spring of 2027 can perfectly stay on he could be dismissed by a special vote in parliament but
25:03probably it's not going to happen the second option is uh uh a new prime minister it is probably going
25:09to be groundhog day again and again it's going to be the same story that person will not have majority
25:14in parliament so uh the end would be probably a second dissolution and then it will be 2027 mr macron will
25:22have to go because he cannot do a third mandate and we will know and to come back to your first
25:26question people will have a new president and we will be back to the normal sort of normal fifth
25:33republic probably with a strong executive that would be uh i think that that would be the scenario i
25:41would favor what is your crystal ball damien lecombe tell you first of all i think it is clear that the
25:48fifth republic cannot work as it used to uh when you have a political uh party system that is so
25:55divided and so so fragmented and i'm not sure that we can go back to to normal uh i think that even
26:02with our majority electoral system even a snap election and even a parliamentary election after a
26:09presidential one you you can still have a very divided parliament so once again i think that uh the
26:15the the the current uh legislative term can only work if you respect the the the logic of the uh of
26:23the 2024 election that is the victory of the republican front and you you search for compromises
26:29inside the republican front that is between the left wing and the centrist coalition and the problem is
26:35that until now uh president macron has really been willing to protect his legacy at all costs and he is
26:41really he he refuses absolutely that uh his policies uh especially his fiscal policies in favor of the rich uh
26:49uh to be uh uh to be withdrawn and to be uh uh to to make any anything that could uh was done his legacy so
26:57right now emmanuel macron and the the centrist coalition is really uh blocking any real compromises
27:05but even if even if the left comes to power they still would not have a majority no but they will
27:11have any uh any government right now would have to uh to work across the hills to to find uh to find
27:17majority that is why i think uh given that the the the the voters in the 2024 election voted against the
27:24far right they voted for the uh either the left-wing coalition or the the centrists in the second
27:30run to uh to uh to prevent uh the national rally to win uh to win a majority obviously the the the
27:36the leftists and the centrists have to work together to uh to to uh now that they have prevented the
27:43far right to uh to come into power so if there is no uh no government able to find to reach some
27:50majorities and compromises between the centuries and the at least part of the of the left wing there is
27:56no possibility to have a functional majority right now under what circumstances uh would you see
28:05your party taking part in any kind of coalition government right now at this point well i think
28:11there's one element which is important to point out and to understand what's going to unfold in weeks
28:16to come i really don't share the analysis that there would be two populist blocks that converge actually
28:23the left wing block has has been the only block to consistently fight far right ideas and if you
28:29look at our votes this year in the national assembly we are the ones who vote for most against uh the
28:36far right but you do have one block which is converging with the far right which is the central block
28:42and this is why we are in a crisis it's because the republican front can't work as it did a few years ago
28:50because we are facing a centrist block which is sliding to the far right when you look at the
28:56themes when you look at the narrative when you look at their votes so today uh the risk indeed if
29:02there's a dissolution is that we won't have the capacity to form this republican front because we've
29:08got the central block which is already kind of governing hand in hand with the far right when you look at the
29:13way uh the minister ruta you uh used his power he was leaning on the far right very clearly and that's
29:20the result of macronism that's the result the rise of the so if emmanuel macron tomorrow were to uh
29:26offer as was asked by the by by this coalition of left-wing parties uh to name this high civil servant
29:34lucy casté as the prime minister would you be amenable to uh having ministers from your party in that
29:41government to have a government um which defends the program we were elected on because we heard
29:47emmanuel macron says i've been elected i'm going to respect my mandate and go towards the five years
29:53i've been elected i have a mandate it lasts five years and he hasn't found a problem uh in dissolving
29:58the national national assembly and doing it potentially twice so if we're in conditions where we can um
30:06apply our program then there's then there's a debate in the national assembly and uh that's where
30:11democracy happens but we're not going to water down our ambitions and our program beforehand and that's
30:19strategic difference with the socialist party right now they want to go into government with uh kind of
30:25watered down version of uh of the program that we defended uh together uh only last year so so does that
30:33mean the divorce is sealed with the socialists well they seem to have sealed their divorce with the
30:38program we've that we were the platform that we were meant to be defending uh together so i'll take
30:44that as a probably yes um if we look at the current uh stage of affairs then they seem to have moved away
30:51from the reasons we had to stay together uh in 2024 uh it brings us to a point that was made earlier by
30:57claire lejeune is it about the the system or is it about the man the emmanuel macron who still is
31:05popular abroad by the way so it's sometimes difficult to explain he's seen as a rampart against uh uh the
31:13against the likes of uh donald trump and and vladimir putin so i think it's both really i think um
31:20um um the fifth republic used to work in uh um another with another public opinion uh another france to
31:32be honest in the 50s and 60s and 70s today i'm not sure it works anymore because today we have this
31:39tripartite opinion with people on the left people so since the second world war you've had two
31:45constitutions you had the fourth republic yeah we had 25 governments in 12 years it was but it was
31:51it was the power was with parliament basically and there were lots of coalitions and the president
31:55was weak so basically and then you had de gaulle come in and and now strong executive so it's worked
32:00for some time so which which will what's next yeah well i think i don't see a sixth republic being
32:06anything but uh um a false republic in revival to to to be honest so uh i am not able to tell you
32:15there is a new solution with a new constitution that will help the country go back to stability
32:21i don't see that happening i think macron has also responsibility because his behave as a hyper
32:26president using all the powers that he could and now that he's dissolved he keeps thinking he can govern
32:31the country he hasn't uh i know how to say that but he hasn't given up on on governing the country
32:37and he's tried again and again to still be a fifth republic uh de gaulle like president so
32:45the future is very open and i'm not sure constitutional law gets the solution to the
32:50problem france has at the moment all right and this vote of confidence is on monday two days later
32:56there's a call to mobilize which started on facebook and other social media kind of like the 2019 yellow
33:03vest movement we don't know damien lecomte uh if what's going to happen on september 10th is going
33:10to be something or nothing we do know trade unions have also called for strike actions a week later
33:17but how much of an appetite do the french have right now for uh mobilizing in the streets and and
33:24marching and striking the big question uh indeed is if the the movement that is going to happen on
33:31on september 10 in going to be like the yellow vest that is a very grassroots movement uh that was a
33:39big tent you know there was obviously a lot of left-wing and trade unionist elements but also a lot of
33:44ordinary citizens that were not usually politicized and also some elements from populist right wing and
33:50flag right and the the we have seen uh in 2023 uh during the pension reform debate that the one-off
33:59days of actions and strikes and protests were not very effective but if you have a general strike that
34:05can last over time obviously that can be a real france feel like a general strike right now but i think
34:11right now there is a real possibility that a lot of people are exhausted and they cannot possibly afford
34:17uh such a huge huge movement so it is yet to to see if uh the it's going to be uh the um like the the
34:25yellow vest again uh or if is going to be a lot of occasional days of strike and protests and that
34:32will be probably less effective to uh to change the situation has francois bairou succeeded with this vote
34:37of confidence scheduling it two days before this day of action on september the 10th has he succeeded in
34:44perhaps uh killing the momentum of uh it could deflect the movement if there is a movement at all we
34:51don't know yet it's it appeared in social media on the far right by various tiny groups on the far right
34:58it's been spread through a lot of bots partly russian bots and uh it's emerged in the public debate because
35:05some people on the left did take that movement uh and they did try to serve on this movement as we say
35:11in france they try to you know capitalize on that movement and to uh play with it but it's not possible
35:18to play really with it since it's non-existent for the moment it's only social media we will see that
35:24on september 10th my guess is it won't be a big thing and maybe we will have trouble later on because
35:32it started something nonetheless and the truth is the people in france are as you say exhausted they're
35:37also very angry and they have been angry for a lot of time that's why we have so big populist
35:44movements nowadays it's because of all this anger and basically if you want to sum it up either you
35:49are the leader of the popular anger you are able to do something with it politically you can capitalize
35:55on the anger like trump is doing uh or other populist leaders are doing or you will be uh at the
36:02bottom of the anger you will be the target of this anger well actually reality the reality of this
36:08movement is quite far from what you are describing between i'm only stating the facts i'm not the whole
36:14the whole of the summer there have been citizens assembly there's been four um in the department that
36:20i represent isan with real life people about a hundred at each gathering talking about their problems and
36:27i think it's really harmful to um kind of dismiss every popular movement at each time that people
36:34try to get together and voice was born on the far right that's only the truth and that's there were
36:39multiple it was as all as all grassroots as all grassroots movement for points of uh from which it
36:47starts are always very diverse there were some some that started on the far right if you look at the
36:53political color and the ideas that are in a majority in the movement right now that is very active and
37:00that is very very real with real citizens behind um it's mostly left-wing uh ideas multiple ideas also
37:09about regaining power uh as a people uh making their voice heard and i really think it's uh harmful to
37:17dismiss this as some kind of russian that's the problem with the populism it's always at the
37:23very basis of populism there are true people true problems the outcome of what is being done with
37:29all that is so dire what we see in the us the outcome of populism is so dire
37:35politicians haven't done anything and people turned up people turned up in this in the citizen
37:41assembly why do you think the russians are struggling to meet and meet making meats because
37:46they are fed up with the situation they have many reasons to be fed up um so they have a legitimacy and
37:54you can't just say oh it's the far right that are manipulating them or it's russia that is manipulating
38:00them i think um if we are serious about democracy then we've got to trust people have a critical mind of
38:06their own can vote and be know that what what they want to vote and um this comes back to the problem we
38:13have with emmanuel macron who um on the evening of the 7th of july just said basically oh the french
38:20people didn't vote right then i'll just ignore it and carry on with my policies and this is what
38:25is hard okay so democracy so we're running short on time so i want to go around the room quickly so
38:29short answers please to answer the question that's on the screen should europe worry claire lejeune you go
38:35first um i think europe has european countries have many reasons to worry uh given should they worry
38:44about france oh about about france um i think that we're entering a phase of instability that could be
38:52resolved um in one fairly simple way uh is the resignation of emmanuel macron the call to new
39:00presidential elections which would set a new pathway a new brand of policies in our country and that's
39:07the only way forward i can see we're going to stay in this conundrum for a long time if we don't go
39:13down this pathway at least until 2027. and if we believe what was in that clip uh damien of emmanuel
39:20macron saying he's not resigning then the answer for for color john is clearly yes so should europe worry
39:27i think you should worry uh about france but i think the the the real solution for france right
39:32now is to finally learn to trust parliamentary deliberation and to not rely on presidentialism
39:38is that still possible i think it is possible i mean uh before uh before the fifth republic uh french
39:44relied a lot on parliamentary deliberation it was not always effective but it was a parliamentary system so
39:50political culture can change and i think france really needs to learn to be a real parliamentary system
39:55again before i ask you the question delhi baranger the outset of the conversation philip moro chevrolet
40:01gave us one of the uh possible reasons why uh francois bayrou decided to uh uh to call this uh vote of
40:10confidence was he was thinking about his legacy well the country france lionizes lovable losers that stand
40:17on principle and there's often been there's been a lot the past week references to
40:22he was a center-left prime minister in the 1950s pierre mendes france who chose to fall on his sword
40:28over his conciliatory stand on uh the war of independence in algeria and his call for a joint
40:35european defense all this talk about uh for young people is somebody who's perhaps forgotten pierre
40:42and this fourth republic politician uh everybody wants to be uh um the new madest france in french
40:51politics and they want to be that he manages to the guy whose government falls but everybody likes yes
40:56but the guy who takes the moral high ground right and i would second what damien just said i can be
41:03short on my answer what france is now is a uh uh parliamentary government on europe would be happy with that
41:11all right so europe should worry unless parliamentary politics plays out the president needs to get that
41:19the parliament has to do his job and the president has to you know not resign but recede and let other
41:25people decide what should be done that would be the best thing to to come and uh if we europe has very
41:33there's a lot of reasons to be worried about the french situation because if we have a populist
41:36government it will be pro-russian and it could change the face of europe for a long period to
41:42come and we don't wish for that and we'll have to leave it there unfortunately much more to talk
41:46about philippe borchevrolet i want to thank you i want to thank as well denis baranger damien lecomte
41:50claire lejeune thank you for being with us here in the france 24 debate
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