The new Prime Minister of France, the centrist François Bayrou, promised this Friday, in his first official speech after assuming the Head of Government, that he will display transparency and dedication from the first minute of his difficult mandate, assumed from the hands of his predecessor, Michel Barnier, dismissed in a motion of censure due to a budget crisis.
Barnier governed as a minority and this lack of support led to difficulties in approving the budgets. In this context, he resorted to Article 49.3 of the French Constitution, which contemplates the possibility of passing laws by avoiding the parliamentary vote in exchange for having to submit to a motion of censure, promoted by the left and supported by the extreme right, which in the end did not. could save.
“My way of acting will be not to hide anything, not to neglect anything and not to leave anything aside,” said Bayrou at the Matignon headquarters, after recognizing the “seriousness” of the situation he has just assumed.
“We have the duty, at such a serious moment for the country, for Europe and in the face of all the risks on the planet, to face with open eyes, without timidity, the situation inherited from entire decades” marked, according to him, by the absence of searches for “balances without which it is difficult for us to live”.
Bayrou has taken the opportunity to convey a “feeling of gratitude” towards Barnier “for the risk” he has taken in carrying out his mandate and for having faced with “demonstrated altruism” the “enormous difficulties, and God knows it well”, that he faces. the country. “I am aware of the Himalayas of difficulties that lie ahead,” he added, before naming the budget crisis as the “first” of these obstacles.
Bayrou added that his mandate will have two fundamental objectives at a macroscopic level: breaking down “the glass wall built between citizens and power” and fulfilling the “duty of giving opportunities to those who do not have them.”
Barnier, minutes before, handed over the witness after evaluating a brief mandate almost doomed to failure. “I knew from day one that my government’s time was limited,” explained the former prime minister, exposed to an “unlikely political alliance” that has finally marked his decline.
Politics “cannot be resolved between us,” he stated before encouraging “young people” to “get involved.”