in the event of cohabitation, who, the Prime Minister or the President of the Republic, manages defense issues?

In an interview with “Télégramme”, Marine Le Pen considered that the title of “chief of the armies” of the President of the Republic is “honorary” in the event of cohabitation.

What roles for the President of the Republic in the event of cohabitation? Marine Le Pen delivered her vision, Wednesday June 26, in the daily newspaper Telegram. She thinks she can obtain an absolute majority and therefore send Jordan Bardella to Matignon and her words sound like a warning to Emmanuel Macron, particularly in the field of Defense.

“Chief of the armed forces, for the president, it is an honorary title”, because “It is the Prime Minister who holds the purse strings”, assures Marine Le Pen, who therefore goes even further than what Jordan Bardella said a few days ago. The president of the RN “has no intention of picking a quarrel, but he has set red lines. The president will not be able to send troops” in Ukraine, she insists, thus seeming to break with the tradition according to which a president retains broad powers in matters of international policy and defense.

“This is an extremely serious statement,” reacts François Bayrou. Emmanuel Macron’s ally believes that Marine Le Pen “profoundly calls into question the Constitution”, when it implies that the president is not the head of the Armed Forces as enshrined in the Constitution. He recalls that it is indeed Emmanuel Macron who chairs the Defense Councils and appoints civil and military posts in the State. The Minister of Defense gives it another layer: “The Constitution is not honorary”, writes Sébastien Lecornu, he quotes the words of General de Gaulle: the head of state “concludes treaties, since he is the head of the armies and presides over defense.”

Moreover, Marine Le Pen seems to be lowering her voice. She brings a little nuance to a series of messages on social networks: it is not a question of “call into question the reserved domain of the President of the Republic”, she writes, as if to dismiss the criticism. His camp fully intends to apply “the Constitution, the whole Constitution, nothing but the Constitution”, using François Mitterrand’s formula on the eve of the first cohabitation. Marine Le Pen insists all the same: the Prime Minister has the “way to oppose the sending of troops through budgetary control”. She takes the example of December 1999: “Prime Minister Lionel Jospin opposed the head of state’s desire to send troops to Ivory Coast” at the time of a putsch and it was in fact the Prime Minister’s line of cohabitation which had prevailed.