“We have neither money nor a majority”: does the Lecornu government still have room to maneuver to respond to the social crisis?

The anger still does not subside. After weeks of blockades of high schools and universities, but also several demonstrations instigated in particular by the yellow vests, Thursday, November 5, marks a major day of national inter-professional mobilization at the call of the inter-union. Among the many demands, the unions are asking in particular for the immediate opening, in all companies and branches, of negotiations to increase salaries and implement equal pay for women and men, the increase in pensions for retirees and the value of the index point for civil servants.

Also read: Wage increases, public services, “tax justice”… What are the unions’ demands for the November 5 strike? For the government of Sébastien Lecornu, this new day of mobilization promises to be, once again, high risk.

After having conceded several measures aimed at high school students – without this being enough to completely extinguish the mobilization – the executive is this time summoned to find answers to the deep social crisis which is affecting the country. And in particular solutions to the thorny question of purchasing power. “Legitimate debates, but presidential election debates” But does he still have the means?

"From a budgetary point of view", the government's capacity for action is "obviously very weak", recognizes a minister. After a decline in GDP in the first quarter and stagnation in the second, French growth fell again by 0.1% in the third. The executive is seeking to make 43 billion euros in savings, with the aim of keeping the deficit at 5% of GDP next year, even though interest rates on the debt are at their highest in twenty years.

The debates on the finance bill are taking place at this very moment in a National Assembly still without a majority. “There is no budgetary room for maneuver, they are even negative. Responding to young people with new spending, and therefore the deficit, is giving with one hand what we will take from them with the other when they have to pay the bill,” warns a Macronist MP.

"It is vain to ask anything from a weak government which is only a few months old. It is vain for the government to make promises which will be kept (or not) by their successors. "A Macronist deputy to franceinfo The government of Sébastien Lecornu, which lives under the perpetual threat of censorship, already knows its end date: the presidential election next May.

“We have neither money nor a majority, and the presidential election is in six months,” bluntly summarizes another deputy from the central bloc. On the Elysée side, we are referring to the vote next spring to decide on these major “macro-economic” issues, such as the cost of labor or the financing of social spending. “These are legitimate debates but presidential election debates,” Emmanuel Macron’s entourage explains to France Télévisions.

Machine-translated from French