A Defiant Macron Says He Won’t Resign as France’s Leader

 

A Defiant Macron Says He Won’t Resign as France’s Leader

 

A day after his chosen prime minister was forced to resign, President Emmanuel Macron denounced his political opponents.

 

Catherine Porter Aurelien Breeden

By Catherine Porter and Aurelien Breeden

Reporting from Paris

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/05/world/europe/macron-france-prime-minister.html

Dec. 5, 2024

 

A day after his government fell in a no-confidence vote, forcing his handpicked prime minister to resign, President Emmanuel Macron of France lashed out at his political opponents on Thursday, calling them irresponsible and power-hungry, and declaring he would not step down.

 

He also attempted to calm the country and sketch a way out of the chaos created by a deadlocked, angry lower house of Parliament. He promised to appoint a new prime minister in the coming days who could form a government that reflected a broad cross-section of parties, and could pass an emergency budget to avoid a shutdown of essential state services.

 

“A new era must start, in which everyone must work for France and where new compromises must be built,” Mr. Macron said in a 10-minute televised address from his gilded office in the Élysée Palace. “We can’t afford divisions or inaction.”

 

It seemed unlikely that the speech would be enough to calm the president’s growing number of detractors.

 

The country was still reeling from the night before, when a majority of lawmakers voted to topple Prime Minister Michel Barnier and his cabinet less than three months after it was formed. That made it the shortest-tenured in the history of France’s Fifth Republic.

 

The lawmakers’ move put France’s 2025 budget in limbo, delaying measures needed to address the country’s towering debt and widening deficit.

 

Many blame Mr. Macron for the situation — first for unbridled government spending since the Covid lockdowns, and then for calling a snap election last summer that resulted in a highly divided Parliament, with no clear majority.

 

He said that the decision to call the election was misunderstood, and once again offered his rationale for it. And he flatly refused to take the blame for the current chaos.

 

“I will never shoulder the irresponsibility of others, most notably lawmakers who chose in good conscience to topple the budget and the French government a few days before Christmas holidays,” he said.

 

“They are not thinking of you, of your lives, of your difficulties,” he said. “Let’s be honest. They are thinking of one thing: the presidential election.”

 

In recent weeks, as political deadlock set in at the National Assembly, the calls for Mr. Macron to resign have increased, not simply from his political opponents, but also from moderate voices.

 

Mr. Macron noted that he had been elected with a mandate of five years, and said he intended to serve until the end in 2027, when he will be term-limited. “This is why the only timetable that matters to me is not that of ambitions; it is that of our nation,” he said.

 

He said he intended to use his last 30 months in office being “useful to the country.”

 

Mr. Macron’s political opponents were swift to respond.

 

The leader of the far-right National Rally, Marine Le Pen, sent a “little reminder to President Macron” on social media. Toppling the government, she noted, is “provided for in the Constitution of our Fifth Republic.”

 

The founder of the far-left France Unbowed party, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, called the speech “hollow and pretentious” and pointed out that the no-confidence vote had been undertaken because Mr. Macron’s government tried to push through a budget bill without a final vote.

 

It was not the prime minister who was the real target of the no-confidence vote, Mr. Mélenchon said on national television. “It was Mr. Macron,” he said.

 

Mr. Macron ended his atypically short speech with a call to people’s better natures, reminding them that this Saturday, the country will celebrate the reopening of Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris just five years after it was badly damaged in a fire — something many had deemed impossible.

 

“This is proof that we know how to do great things, that we know how to do the impossible,” he said.

 

Catherine Porter is an international reporter for The Times, covering France. She is based in Paris. More about Catherine Porter

 

Aurelien Breeden is a reporter for The Times in Paris, covering news from France. More about Aurelien Breeden