President LR of the Senate believes that the French are currently more concerned about inflation and public services than the reform championed by Emmanuel Macron.
The President (LR) of the Senate Gérard Larcher expressed his reluctance on Saturday to initiate a reform of the institutions, as Emmanuel Macron wishes, wondering about the advisability of the “moment” when the subjects “of inflation and the crisis of services public” seem to be a priority.
“We are always ready to examine what improves the functioning of democracy: simplification, decentralization, and we are working on it… But is this the time?” Asked Gérard Larcher in an interview with the Parisian.
“If you ask the French about their concerns, I doubt they will answer: ‘Reform of the Court of Justice of the Republic, reform of the Superior Council of the Judiciary or proportional to the National Assembly’. I rather hear about inflation and crisis in public services”, he argued.
A project relaunched by Macron during his speech
For his part, Emmanuel Macron hammers his will to move forward on this subject, after having stumbled over it during his first five-year term. In his televised address on Monday, the Head of State said he wanted to present “main avenues for the functioning of our institutions to gain in efficiency and citizen participation”.
Emmanuel Macron has also recently received at the Élysée Gérard Larcher as well as the President of the Assembly Yaël Braun-Pivet (Renaissance) to discuss these questions. If she said she was in favor of a reform, she also questioned the timing, the pension crisis not opening according to her “not a favorable climate”.
For Gérard Larcher, “the return of confidence is not the institutional construction game as a priority”.
“Crisis of governance and trust”
The President of the Senate also pointed to the “crisis of governance and confidence” going through according to him by the country, “linked to the absence of results, to an overly vertical governance, to a sprawling bureaucracy, to this France of to side which feels forgotten and takes refuge in abstention, but also in the absence of an absolute majority in the National Assembly”.
“We must regain closeness with the French”, further pleaded the elected representative of Yvelines, whose name sometimes comes up to replace Élisabeth Borne at Matignon, if however Emmanuel Macron finds an agreement with Les Républicains.
“The political conditions not met” for his arrival at Matignon
But “the political conditions today are not met”, underlined Gérard Larcher, without however formally excluding the hypothesis.
“We have major disagreements with the policy pursued by the executive, on public spending, on decentralization, on the sovereign …”, he further argued, assuring that his “horizon” was his candidacy in the senatorial elections in September, and his renewal as president of the Senate.
Gérard Larcher also urged the right to find “coherence, cohesion and a political line”, after being torn on the pension reform. “We need a strategy, a line, before thinking about the presidential election,” he insisted.
