Arthur De Laborde with AFP // Photo credit: Ludovic MARIN / POOL / AFP
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7:10 p.m., November 17, 2023
Emmanuel Macron discussed the international situation at length on Friday with the party leaders who were present for the second “Saint-Denis meetings”, before getting to the heart of the matter on the broadening of the scope of the referendum and the reforms institutional. For this new meeting, Éric Ciotti (Les Républicains), Olivier Faure (Socialist Party) and Manuel Bompard (La France Insoumise) had defected, to the great dismay of the Head of State who thus intends to “create consensus” in a fractured country.
As on August 30, an appointment was made at the House of Education of the Legion of Honor, a stone’s throw from the basilica where the kings of France rest. At 9:30 the meeting began. And as before, Emmanuel Macron first delivered, for three hours, his analysis of the international situation, according to a participant. Eric Woerth, Renaissance MP, then presented the main principles of his mission on decentralization. The broadening of the referendum to social issues and the simplification of the popular initiative referendum should then be addressed.
The absentees, “I can understand them”, declared the leader of the PCF Fabien Roussel upon his arrival, denouncing the “democratic impasse” with “a 49.3 per week” in a “violated Parliament”, in reference to the article by the Constitution which allows the adoption of a text without a vote. He came to represent a “left-wing voice” and to defend purchasing power in particular.
Emmanuel Macron fuels “the crisis of democracy”
Marine Tondelier (EELV), on the other hand, considered it “very important to be there”, without which we fall into “a harmful and worrying incommunicability”. She nevertheless criticized Emmanuel Macron who “hears much more from the right ear than from the left ear” and recalled his wish to “put ecology on the agenda” of this discussion. “I am at the head of a government party,” explained Jordan Bardella (RN). “Every time the Republic summons us, we respond.” The head of state can count on his allies, Stéphane Séjourné (Renaissance), François Bayrou (MoDem), Édouard Philippe (Horizons), Laurent Hénart (Radical Party).
“By multiplying initiatives outside the institutional field, you are helping to weaken them and fuel the crisis of democracy,” criticized Éric Ciotti in an open letter of which AFP obtained a copy. The discussion “must be public, either in Parliament, where the people delegate their representatives, or directly with the people themselves by referendum”, he insists. The Republicans are nevertheless represented by a major player, the President of the Senate Gérard Larcher, invited in the same capacity as the President of the Assembly Yaël Braun-Pivet. Hervé Marseille (UDI) and Guillaume Lacroix (PRG) also attended the meeting.
The head of state feels “that his time is running out”
On the left, we denounce “a staging” according to Olivier Faure, or “a monarchical exercise”, “a closed-door format” for La France insoumise. Negative judgments on the exercise also made by 61% of French people, according to an Odoxa survey for Le Figaro. Éric Ciotti also justified his defection by the absence of the head of state at the march against anti-Semitism on Sunday. Olivier Faure refuses to support a possible referendum on immigration.
In this difficult context, the Head of State will make a point of demonstrating that those who are absent are always wrong. If he wants to show that he “let himself be convinced by ideas which were not necessarily his”, it “has to last a little long”, summarizes the political scientist Bruno Cautres who does not exclude a ” presidential political coup with a “somewhat innovative institutional solution”.
The head of state, who cannot run again in 2027, “is beginning to feel that the hourglass is turning, his time is running out”, continues the political scientist. He must therefore “take actions” which form an assessment, with a text on the end of life and the modernization of the Fifth Republic, he outlines. But if, at the end, “the opposition leaders come out saying, it’s very nice to have a ‘snack’ with the President of the Republic, but ‘so what’ (and then), he won’t there will be no third time,” warns Bruno Cauvrai.