At least four members of the Executive will be leaving, although there could be more changes
Back at the Elysée, after an intense international agenda over the past two weeks, French President Emmanuel Macron, along with Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne, are preparing the change of government. This is necessary after his party lost an absolute majority in the National Assembly in the parliamentary elections in June.
Macron has promised ‘a government of action’. The names of the new ministers are expected to be announced before Wednesday, when Élisabeth Borne will present her general policy statement to the National Assembly. The last change of government took place on May 20, after the presidential elections in April. At the moment, the prime minister is not expected to submit to a confidence vote from deputies on Wednesday. The left-wing party union (Nupes) asks him to do this, but Borne is under no obligation to do so.
La France Insumisa (French Podemos) already announced on Wednesday that they will at least file a motion of censure against Borne on Wednesday, although it is unlikely that they will be able to overthrow the prime minister for lack of support. After the parliamentary elections, a reorganization of the executive branch is necessary. At least four members of the current government will leave, although there could be more changes.
Ministers Amélie de Montchalin (Ecological Transition) and Brigitte Bourguignon (Health) and Secretary of State for the Sea Justine Bénin must resign after failing to win a seat in the National Assembly. That is, they do not have the support of the polls. In addition, they will have to find a replacement for the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Yaël Braun-Pivet, who has been elected President of the National Assembly, the first woman to hold this position.
Damien Abad, Minister of Solidarity, and Chrysoula Zacharopoulou, Secretary of State for Development, may also leave the government. The Paris prosecutor’s office has opened an investigation against Abad for attempted rape after a woman’s complaint. And Zacharopoulou, a gynecologist by trade, has also been charged with rape by two women and by a third of “gynecological violence” for events that allegedly took place in her medical office years ago.
Macron returns to focus on national politics and the country’s problems, after a six-month period with a very busy international agenda: from France’s rotating presidency of the Council of the European Union to the war in Ukraine, including the NATO summit in Madrid and the G7 meeting in Germany.
The president, who was re-elected in April after beating Marine Le Pen in the polls, was barely involved in the campaigning for the presidential and legislative elections. He was more involved in the rotating EU presidency and in the war in Ukraine.
France took over the reins of the EU on January 1 to take over from the Czech Republic on July 1. “The Europe of June 2022 is very different from that of January 2022,” Macron said on June 24 in Brussels.
Russia’s unilateral aggression against Ukraine changed Macron’s European agenda. The French president managed to get Europeans to sympathize with Kiev and introduce sanctions against Moscow. They sent military equipment to Ukraine and welcomed Ukrainian refugees to their country with open arms.
At the Versailles summit, held on 10-11 May, EU leaders agreed, among other things, to strengthen their defense capabilities and reduce their dependence on Russian gas, oil and coal imports.
European partners supported the French proposal for the reform of the Schengen area. The Schengen Council was thus created on the model of the Eurogroup, the informal body in which euro area ministers regularly discuss issues related to the single currency. The aim of this Schengen “political pilot” is both to guarantee the free movement of persons in complete security and to protect the external borders of the European Union.
The 27 also approved, under the French presidency, the climate package to reduce community greenhouse gas emissions by at least 55% by 2030; the Digital Markets Act, which takes power from the tech giants; and reached agreement on a European minimum wage.
However, the French Presidency failed to introduce a minimum tax of 15% on the profits of multinationals at European level, which was one of its priorities for this first semester. Paris collided with the blockade, first from Poland and then from Hungary.
Source: La Verdad
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