Macron - Borne: a degraded relationship?

The prime minister has "all my confidence," Macron said in Bratislava where he was traveling. The day after a council of ministers where, according to the confidences of a participant in the daily Le Parisien, the president had seemed to reframe Elisabeth Borne by evoking the response to the National Rally, Emmanuel Macron tried to calm rumors about his degraded relationship with his Prime Minister.

French President Emmanuel Macron speaks during the Globsec Regional Security Forum in Bratislava, Slovakia, May 31, 2023. Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne has "all my confidence," Macron said in Bratislava. AFP - MICHAL CIZEK

Text by: Valérie Gas Follow

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There was fire and Emmanuel Macron tried to extinguish the fire by reaffirming his confidence in Elisabeth Borne publicly. Nevertheless, despite this clarification, many episodes have already given the impression that the relationship between the President of the Republic and his Prime Minister had entered a zone of turbulence. When Elisabeth Borne declared that she no longer wanted to use the 49.3 outside the budget texts, the president tackled her in the press. When the head of government wanted to calm the game with the unions on the pension reform by speaking of a necessary "period of convalescence", the team of the head of state - then in China - did not appreciate it and made it known immediately. When Elisabeth Borne wanted to postpone the immigration bill until the fall, Emmanuel Macron put it back on the 100-day agenda.

'Annoyed'

Despite the efforts of the Elysee and Matignon to try to give the change, a senior official of the majority believes that the president is "annoyed" because he sees that "it does not work". As proof, he argues, "she offered her resignation to the president so that he could reappoint her. He said no", the sign that Emmanuel Macron did not want to give it a new impetus after the pension reform. To hear her, it cannot last and the countdown has begun for Elisabeth Borne.

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Adestabilizing enterprise

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But other voices are being heard to defend the Prime Minister, the only one capable according to them of ensuring balance in the majority for the moment. A Renaissance MP warns against a "destabilizing enterprise" of Elisabeth Borne, badly felt by "her colleagues" in the National Assembly. And above all, she wonders about the political interest of the president to hasten his departure from Matignon. He would rather tend to want to "wear it down to the rope".

>> READ ALSO: France: Emmanuel Macron reframes Elisabeth Borne after his remarks on the RN

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