“It’s getting tense” in the presidential majority

The deputies of Edouard Philippe’s party have control of the agenda of the Assembly on Thursday, while relations are tense between the Renaissance and Horizons groups

How many Renaissance deputies will be present in the hemicycle on Thursday March 14 to examine the proposed laws on fast fashion or the accumulation of mandates from their Horizons allies? What is certain is that Sylvain Maillard, the leader of the Macronists, did not particularly call for the Renaissance troops to fill the bays, because the atmosphere is at “cold War” we say in the corridors, with his counterpart, Laurent Marcangeli, the head of Edouard Philippe’s group.

Tensions caused by the departure a month ago of two Renaissance deputies to the Horizons group. Sylvain Maillard did not appreciate this debauchery at all, even if Horizons denies any “aggressive strategy” : “We just opened the door to people who wanted to come.” Except that for several weeks Sylvain Maillard refused to speak to Laurent Marcangeli. Meetings of the majority thus fell by the wayside, to the point that the boss of the Modem group Jean-Paul Matteï proposed to “play mediator”.

“Furious” or “stunned” Renaissance deputies

On Wednesday evening, the three leaders of the majority in the Assembly finally had dinner together to try to break the deadlock… with a new source of tension added to the menu: Vice-President Horizons of the Naïma Moutchou Assembly which made “furious” Or “stunned” her Renaissance colleagues because she let RN deputies co-sign one of her proposed laws. Which is not done in macronie.

There are regular rises in tension between Macronists and Philippists. “It’s tense”, confides a ministerial advisor. In the background, there are the presidential ambitions of Édouard Philippe for 2027. Example two weeks ago, when the former Prime Minister sounded the alarm on public finances in the newspaper Opinion : “Today the problem is that we are not reforming much.” Enough to make a minister jump: “All the key reforms when he was at Matignon were Macron’s ideas, while Philippe was 80 km/h… So the lessons of reform…”

And then everything is a matter of suspicion, like the mini-campaign of the Philippists for former minister Clément Beaune to be head of the European list. According to a campaign executive, “It was their way of saying: if the elections are a failure, we are not responsible.” Tensions that worry the majority on the theme: “we would still have to stick together to finish the five-year term and have a single candidate in 2027.”