” All that for this ! When the appointment of Elisabeth Borne was finally announced, after two weeks of unprecedented suspense under the Vand République, these are the words that spontaneously came up from press rooms and television sets. The surprise is that there was no surprise!
These long days of procrastination had however suggested that the president was preparing “something”. You could believe that he was going to poach a prominent personality as he had done in 2017 with Édouard Philippe, who came from the Republicans. Unless he recruits a star of ecology, since we have known for weeks that the newcomer would be responsible for the climate transition. Or even an elected official in order to break his technocratic image.
By recruiting one of the most retiring and loyal ministers, who had worked discreetly for five years in the government, this second five-year term begins on the contrary with a president who fully assumes this image. Never elected or a candidate for an election, this 61-year-old polytechnician comes from the Socialist Party, where she was chief of staff to Ségolène Royal, then Minister of the Environment. If the competence of the one who is sometimes compared to a “Swiss army knife” does not seem to be in doubt, it is said to be both effective, but also sometimes brutal.
Elisabeth Borne has distinguished herself in government above all by her reform of unemployment insurance and labor laws. Liberal reforms which have already earned him unanimous criticism from both the radical left and the populist right. In almost identical words, Jean-Luc Mélenchon denounced a “social mistreatment”, and Marine Le Pen, a “social rampage”.
“A performer”
The French press seems unanimous in saying that the one who is only the second woman to access Matignon, after Edith Cresson in 1991, will be above all “a performer”. Between the culture of a Pompidou, the momentum of a Chirac, the intelligence of a Rocard and the delicacy of a Fillon, Emmanuel Macron seems to have chosen above all a personality who is not likely to overshadow him. .
When he was at the Élysée, Nicolas Sarkozy had no hesitation in calling his prime minister a simple “collaborator”. Even if the Constitution specifies that it is the Prime Minister who “determines and leads the policy of the nation”, Emmanuel Macron is in this vein in order to combine all the powers at the Élysée. Its secretary general, the influential Alexis Kohler, actually acting as a real number two.
“Everyone has understood that now the Prime Minister has only become a sort of director of Macron’s cabinet,” said National Rally MEP Thierry Mariani. Emmanuel Macron “thus expresses his desire not to cede any of his power to a politician who could empower himself and lead his own agenda”, adds in Le Figaro public law professor Benjamin Morel.
A persistent rumor wants besides that the choice of Élisabeth Borne was a choice by default. According to many, the director of the real estate group Nexity, Véronique Bédague, as well as the patron saint of the socialist deputies in the National Assembly, Valérie Rabault, would have refused the post. At the last minute, Emmanuel Macron even gave in to the left of his party by not appointing former right-wing MP Catherine Vautrin because she campaigned and voted against same-sex marriage in 2013.
“Élisabeth Borne is only there by default, launches the director of the weekly MarianneNatacha Polony. […] She is this obvious and easy choice which imposes itself when nothing else has been possible. » According to a survey by Odoxa-Backbone Consulting carried out for Le Figaro, barely 57% of French people say they are satisfied with his appointment. It is 12 points less than for Édouard Philippe at the same time.
It remains for the newcomer to pass the test of politics. Traditionally, a prime minister appointed immediately after the presidential election has the task of leading the campaign for the legislative elections, which will take place on 12th and 19th June next. Even if she is a candidate in Calvados, no one imagines Elisabeth Borne as a tribune haranguing the crowds.
” […] it is the embodiment of this high technicality which marked the first five-year term, at the risk of widening the fracture between the base and the top. Her appointment is, in this respect, a real risk, unless, thanks to the legislative elections, the technician turns out to be more political”, can we read in the editorial of the newspaper The world.
For historian Maxime Tandonnet, the choice of a woman from the left shows that the president has less need than before to seduce the right, especially since for the legislative elections, the threat will come rather from the left with the New People’s Ecological and Social Union, which brings together rebels, socialists and ecologists. This “clarification”, he writes in Le Figarohowever, offers the right “a window, albeit a narrow one, to come back to the fore”.
The real test of strength will come after the legislative elections, when it will be necessary to pass the passage of the retirement age from 62 to 65 years. A proposal rejected by two out of three French people who voted for the National Rally or La France insoumise or who abstained. After failing in his first term with a larger project reforming the entire pension system, Emmanuel Macron cannot afford a second failure.
The only certainty is that nothing will be forgiven the new prime minister. Especially since she takes office at a time when the main signals of the economy are turning red.