The French government on Monday survived by just nine votes a no-confidence motion in parliament that required 287 in favour to succeed, tabled after President Emmanuel Macron controversially ordered that his proposed reform of the pensions system, including raising the retirment age on full pension rights from 62 to 64, should be forced through parliament by decree.
There were rowdy scenes on Thursday at France's National Assembly, the lower house of parliament, after the government announced it is to use an article of the constitution which allows it to force its reform of the pension system through the chamber without a vote, a decisiontaken after it became unsure of gaining a majority of members in favour of the hotly contested draft bill.
Despite a history marked by anti-Semitism, the far-right Rassemblement National wants to preside over a working group on the subject at the National Assembly. The authorities at the French Parliament are due to make a decision on this on December 7th. Marine Turchi looks at the reaction to the RN's request, examines the history of a party that was founded as the Front National in 1972, and explains why it now wants to head a group tackling anti-Semitism.
After often rowdy parliamentary debates, rebellion from members of its own camp, and an avalanche of proposed amendments, the French government has used a controversial constitutional power to bypass the National Assembly, the lower and most powerful house, to ensure its first draft legislation for the 2023 budget is enacted by decree and without a vote by MPs.
Legislation includes a four percent increase in pensions and welfare payments, a pay rise for public sector workers, food cheques and a mechanism for companies to make higher tax-free bonus payments to employees.
French MPs gathered earlier this week to debate a censure motion against the new government tabled by the NUPES leftwing coalition. The motion was defeated, but the rowdy parliamentary session soon centred on the “Uber Files” revelations of how Emmanuel Macron, when economy and finance minister, secretly championed the US company’s project to set up business in France. As Pauline Graulle reports, the Left are determined to hold the French president to account over what one MP called “a state scandal”, and are pushing for a parliamentary committee of inquiry into the affair.
Yaël Braun-Pivet, 51, a member of Emmanuel Macron's Renaissance party, has been elected to the post of president - or Speaker - of the National Assembly, the lower house of Parliament, marking the first time a woman has been given the post.
In his first public comments since the election, France’s president said that agreements needed to be found across party lines and that he would seek over the next weeks to establish a working majority.
The outcome of France's legislative elections on Sunday shows the extent to which the country's political map has been redrawn in recent years. There are now three main blocs and groups of voters; Emmanuel Macron's centre-right, the Left and the far-right. But the composition of the new National Assembly, in which Macron's coalition has the single largest bloc of MPs but lacks an overall majority, raises as many questions as answers about the political future. Fabien Escalona assesses the uncertainties that lie ahead.
Having been repudiated at the ballot box in the second round of France's legislative elections on Sunday, Presidential Emmanuel Macron is now faced with an unprecedented political and institutional crisis. Without a working majority in the National Assembly, there looks to be no obvious solutions for him at the start of his second term, unless there is a major but improbable realignment of political groups. Analysis by political correspondent Ilyes Ramdani.
