Six months after the dissolution, French political life has still not returned to cruising speed. The Michel Barnier government could well fall this Wednesday, December 4, after barely three months in office.
At the end of the afternoon, the deputies will examine two motions of censure, one from the left, the other from the alliance of the National Rally and the “ciottists”. This procedure follows the Prime Minister’s triggering of article 49.3 of the Constitution, to have the Social Security financing bill adopted without a vote.
The first motion, tabled by the four groups making up the New Popular Front, collected 185 signatures, almost filling the left. Only two communists and five socialists are missing, which does not necessarily mean that they will refuse to vote for censure.
On the other side of the hemicycle, the motion of the National Rally and its Ciottist allies of the UDR was initialed by all 140 deputies of the two groups.
288 votes needed
The debate on these two motions is scheduled to start this Wednesday at 4 p.m. The vote for each of them will take place immediately, probably around 7 or 8 p.m. MPs can either vote to censure or abstain, but there is no “no” vote in this procedure.
Only deputies who are in favor of censorship participate in the vote by slipping a ballot into a ballot box located in a room adjacent to the hemicycle. Voting will be open for 45 minutes.
It is the left’s motion which will be the first to be put to the vote. If it is adopted, that of the RN will no longer have any reason to exist and will not give rise to a new vote.
To be adopted, the motion must be voted for by an absolute majority of the members of the National Assembly. Usually, 289 votes are needed. But taking into account the three seats currently vacant, this time 288 votes are enough to bring down the government.
On paper, the 325 supporters of censorship therefore clearly exceed the threshold required to bring the procedure to a successful conclusion. It is the left’s motion which should be adopted, since the RN has officially announced that it will vote for it.
If the government of Michel Barnier fell, it would be a first since the overthrow of that of Georges Pompidou in October 1962. The “spontaneous” motion of censure adopted at the time aimed to protest against the holding of a referendum on the election of the President of the Republic by direct universal suffrage, proposed by Charles de Gaulle.
