Three months after entering Matignon, Elisabeth Borne is preparing for her first return as head of government, with a dinner at the Elysée with Emmanuel Macron. Some predicted an impossible mission for her, but after her baptism of fire before the summer, the majority considers that the new Prime Minister has managed to settle down. The adoption of the purchasing power law and the amending budget ended up silencing the most critical, like François Bayrou, who found it too “tech” and not enough “Politics”. “She understood very well how the Assembly worked”, greets a framework of the majority. “She reassured us with her general policy statement”, cheers another.
>>Environment, purchasing power, pensions: in what state of mind does Emmanuel Macron approach the start of the school year?
Elisabeth Borne worked to promote parliamentarians before the summer: she received small groups of 10 to 15 majority deputies in Matignon around a coffee, and she will continue at the start of the school year. “She presented her method to us and listened to us”, describes one of them. The Prime Minister must go to meet local elected officials, during the congresses of associations of elected officials who are held at the start of the school year. Finally, Elisabeth Borne’s popularity rating gained three points and surpassed that of Emmanuel Macron, reaching 41% favorable opinions according to an Ifop poll published in the Sunday newspaper. It is thus a comeback almost in a state of grace, for a head of government who plays the excellent students and who seems to have been accepted by her majority.
But if the purchasing power law adopted this summer was only a “amuse bouche” according to a walker, the sequel promises to be a little more difficult for Elisabeth Borne. “The truth is that we are not ready for anything”, says a ministerial adviser. The President of the Republic and his Prime Minister have their work cut out for them and will have to find a way to decline the “general mobilization” decreed by the Head of State on July 14.
Several urgent issues will be discussed at the executive couple’s dinner on Tuesday, with ecology at the top of the pile. The Prime Minister will have to give substance to the ecological planning for which she is responsible, with this “ecological planning agenda”, an order from Emmanuel Macron which should be ready in the fall. Ministers are invited to work on energy sobriety plans, others want to present their own measures. In addition, the bill on renewable energies, with in particular the risky subject of wind power, on land and at sea, must arrive in the hemicycle at the start of the school year.
Elisabeth Borne will also have to deal with the very slippery reform of unemployment insurance, one of the first texts presented to the Council of Ministers, and one of the first examined in Parliament.
“It will be necessary to find a consensus in the majority, to convince the social partners then to seek other deputies, undoubtedly on the right.”
An elected majorityat franceinfo
The risk would be “reactivate the left-right divide”, warns another. Without forgetting the fundamental text on the budget, which will occupy a good part of the autumn. And always the same burning question: what majority will be gathered to vote for these texts?
The Prime Minister will therefore have to reconnect with the method adopted before the summer: discuss, find compromises, sometimes step back a little. But beware, warns a ministerial adviser, the big files of the start of the school year will be the real exam for the Prime Minister: “if things go wrong at the Assemblyhe warns, It’s bound to be his fault.”