The Prime Minister was confirmed in her duties on Monday by the President of the Republic after weeks of doubts and procrastination. But, the method chosen by the Head of State reflects a minimum maintenance.
Elisabeth Borne has signed a new CDD. In a confidence released by the entourage of the President of the Republic to the press, on the evening of Monday July 17, Emmanuel Macron confirmed his Prime Minister at Matignon. “The 100-day target has been met and calm has returnedexplains the Elysée. The country is moving forward. The executive must work and prepare for the start of the school year. The head of state nevertheless asked his head of government to carry out this week “adjustments” in his team. Understand: a reshuffle is on the agenda.
The method chosen by the Elysée to keep Elisabeth Borne in office does not in any case demonstrate an excess of enthusiasm. “The way it was extended, poor prying given to a few newsrooms at 7 p.m…. It’s minimum service!”notes a minister at France Télévisions.
“If Macron had wanted to strengthen his Prime Minister, he would have let her resign and renamed her officially.”
A ministerat France Televisions
“It’s an extension on the sly. It has no new momentum. Borne was pleading for a major reshuffle. It won’t be the case. It’s not a sign of confidence”pushes a deputy. “The atmosphere is a little half fig, half grape, in ‘all that for that’ mode…, releases a framework of the majority. It’s not going to revitalize it.”
“Preserving continuity and stability”
Since his interview on TF1 and France 2, following the conflicting sequence of the pension reform, the Head of State had cast doubt on the retention of his Prime Minister. After reflection, the president therefore judged that Elisabeth Borne remained his best option to animate the government team. “This maintenance, I analyze it as the wish to preserve continuity and stability in an unstable period. It is understandable”blows a member of the majority. “Changing Prime Minister is to burn a cartridge”, already estimated a minister in June. With an upheaval in Matignon, a new political crisis risked leading to a dissolution, according to several observers. “It would not have been a good calculation to separate from Borne. The fall will be difficult with a lot of 49.3 for the budget, and the risk of motions of censure”confirms a Renaissance deputy.
“If the government is to be overthrown, it will be better for her rather than a newly appointed prime minister.”
A Renaissance MPat France Televisions
If the Gérald Darmanin hypothesis has circulated well in recent weeks, the Minister of the Interior has not managed to win the support of the entire presidential camp. “Darmanin is very divisive. Not sure that he would have won a lot of votes on the LR side and the Renaissance deputies from the left did not want it”, explains a parliamentarian of the majority. Emmanuel Macron also avoided propelling a possible successor to the Elysee Palace to Matignon. “Would the president have supported someone more political? I don’t think so”slips an influential Renaissance deputy.
“The president wants a collaborator, as he had one with Castex. He does not want someone who thinks differently from him”, confirms a heavyweight of the majority. Elisabeth Borne owes her survival above all to the absence of a credible alternative. “The five-legged sheep does not exist”repeat at will several executives of the presidential camp.
A complicated relationship
However, the position of Elisabeth Borne seems precarious. “Macron had no better, no one can bring back an absolute majority. After the senatorial [le 24 septembre]the situation will be different., said a minister. Especially since many talk about the complicated relationship between the president and the head of government.
Emmanuel Macron did not hesitate to crop Matignon several times. “I am not responsible for the Prime Minister’s interviews with AFP”had retorted the head of state when Elisabeth Borne had expressed her intention to no longer use 49.3 outside financial texts. A little later, the president also distanced himself from his Prime Minister when the latter designated the National Rally as the“heir of Pétain”. We don’t fight the far right “with the words of the 90s and moral arguments”, he had dropped in the Council of Ministers.
“He has a lot of admiration for his working abilities, but they don’t have any hooks.”
A framework of the majorityat franceinfo
“The relations between Matignon and the Elysée, it is all the same a long history of difficulties, comments Sacha Houlié, Renaissance president of the Assembly’s law commission. Look at Chirac with Giscard, Rocard with Mitterrand, Fillon with Sarkozy. But that doesn’t stop people from working well together.”
“She still took the mouthful of it”
The supporters of Elisabeth Borne have not ceased, for weeks, to put forward the results of the polytechnician, who tried to move forward by finding majorities of circumstance. “She got results much more than we want to see. She still had about thirty texts adopted without 49.3. It’s a good compass”greets Stanislas Guérini, Minister of the Public Service. “I find that we have done more in the first year of this five-year term than in the first year of the previous one.also welcomes Sacha Houlié. She has carried out the most delicate projects of recent years, from pension reform to that of unemployment insurance, through all the programming of nuclear energy and renewables.
“She withstood every onslaught and pushed every project forward with headwinds.”
Sacha Houlié, Renaissance MPat franceinfo
“She proved to be more solid than many thought at the beginning, while she still took a lot of it”, also notes an LR deputy. But, in the majority, “bornism” also has its detractors. “Having succeeded in passing X texts is the result of a method, not of a political vision”, mocks a deputy. Faced with the absence of a clear majority in the Assembly, the Prime Minister, with a “techno” profile, was forced to negotiate constantly. “She has done more politics than we imagine”says MP LR. “Elisabeth Borne received us regularly. The coffee is good, but we quickly noticed that we have disagreements, and for some of them, they are irremediable, insurmountable”insists for his part the boss of the Socialist deputies, Boris Vallaud.
Above all, the compromises were quickly eclipsed by the battle for pensions and an 11th use of article 49.3. The Prime Minister had however swept several times the hypothesis of such a passage in force. To obtain a favorable vote on this reform, she notably gave in to several demands of LR to obtain an agreement with the right. “Several ministers and deputies are still wondering why we did not go to the vote”, blows a ministerial adviser. After weeks of protests from the opposition and a strong mobilization in the streets, the absence of a vote in the Assembly sounded like an admission of failure.
To heal the wounds left by the sequence, Emmanuel Macron had set a course of “100 days of appeasement and action”. Despite the riots in the suburbs following the death of Nahel, killed by police fire, the head of government managed to demonstrate her capacity for resistance and to convince the Elysée. “July 14 was a success. The Justice programming law was voted on Tuesday evening in the National Assembly after the final vote on the military programming law”, notes the entourage of the president. Elisabeth Borne will therefore be able to continue to apply her roadmap presented in April … at least until the fall.