“Strike the iron while it’s still hot”: Emmanuel Macron will send “in the next few hours” to party leaders a letter summarizing the exchanges they had in Saint-Denis in an attempt to move forward in research of compromise, with a possible social conference in October.
This letter “wants to faithfully summarize” the meeting of August 30, government spokesman Olivier Véran explained on Wednesday after a government seminar at the start of the school year. The political forces will be able to “propose corrective measures before considering future meetings”.
The letter had not reached the headquarters of the parties surveyed by AFP on Wednesday evening and the Elysee Palace did not provide more details on the terms of the dispatch.
If no date is immediately advanced for a next meeting, the Head of State “calls for it”, assured Olivier Véran. “He is extremely motivated to move forward”, “to build the broadest possible consensus with a lot of audacity”.
“I will return on one condition: if there is a strict agenda,” reacted the boss of the socialists Olivier Faure on franceinfo.
“If it’s just to make commercial coffee, I can do it elsewhere, I don’t need to participate in a useless staging”, he mocked, ensuring that he “still did not understand “the objective pursued by the Head of State.
In the meantime, the social conference on wages “below the minimum wage” and on “working conditions”, agreed during the Saint-Denis meeting, could be held in October. It must relate mainly to the professional branches which have, for nearly half of them, minimum wages lower than the minimum wage.
The president, never stingy with new consultation formats, brought together the party leaders to try to overcome the deadlocks in the Assembly, in the absence of an absolute majority.
It is a question of “improving the coherence of the Nation” after the riots and of “strengthening the democratic mechanisms” in the face of growing distrust of politics, explained Olivier Véran.
An approach which could in particular go through the use of a referendum, a “work on decentralization”. With four priorities: education, health, ecological planning and “republican order”.
The government seminar, which was held in the wake of the Council of Ministers, was also an opportunity to roll out the roadmap for the presidential majority for the fall.
With in sight a possible motion of censure against the government of Elisabeth Borne during the vote on the Finance Bill 2024 in the Assembly.
A sword of Damocles which could upset the course of an already largely thwarted five-year term for Emmanuel Macron, with the key being a risk of dissolution of the Assembly.
The ecological planning roadmap, which has been postponed several times, will be presented by Elisabeth Borne “during the week of September 18”, announced Olivier Véran.
She will present it to the political forces in the wake of the Saint-Denis consultations, but the president will remain in the front line, said the Elysée.
Finally, the very controversial immigration bill could be debated “in early November in the Senate”.
Another meeting of this all-out political return for the Head of State, he will chair Thursday morning at the Elysee Palace the third plenary edition of the National Council for Refoundation (CNR), in particular devoted to education.
But this Macronian tool – intended to “build consensus” by bringing together political forces, social partners, representatives of companies and associations – will again be boycotted by the opposition and part of the unions, including the CGT, Force Ouvrière and CFE-CGC.
Unknown to citizens, the CNR struggles to anchor itself in the political landscape, to the point of raising questions about its future.
“This is not the end of the CNR”, yet assures the Elysée. “Let’s stop being in this somewhat frantic pace where we try to bury things three or six months later”, annoys the presidential palace.
“The CNR continues at the territorial level”, where the results are considered more convincing because less exposed to political “instrumentalization”, we continue, thus suggesting that it could stop in its full format.
According to the Elysée, more than 19,000 schools have already committed to the process and more than 450 CNR health meetings have been held, including 239 labeled and funded territorial projects.
On the sidelines of the CNR, the Head of State must meet with the secretary general of the CFDT Marylise Léon and with the president of the FNSEA Arnaud Rousseau.
09/06/2023 21:33:08 – Paris (AFP) – © 2023 AFP
