Emmanuel Macron has insisted he is not to blame for France’s paralysis. CGTN’s Stuart Smith analyzes the troubled French President's dramatic address to the nation.
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00:00The government lost a no-confidence vote, despite the concessions made by Prime Minister Michel Barnier to all the parliamentary groups.
00:08It lost a no-confidence vote, which is unheard of in 60 years, because far-right and far-left joined together in an anti-republican front.
00:16This couldn't have passed without cross-party support from a swathe of opposition lawmakers.
00:21They say they had no choice because Michel Barnier's budget was too radical on public spending cuts and tax rises.
00:28But President Emmanuel Macron believes that what they were really doing was trying to weaken him and his government,
00:34and so he wants the public to blame them for this mess, not his own leadership.
00:38A special law will be tabled in Parliament before the middle of December,
00:42and this temporary law will, as our constitution stipulates, allow the continuity of our public services and the life of the country.
00:49It will apply to 2025 the choices made in 2024.
00:53Without a government, no new laws can be passed, which includes the budget for 2025, which lays out what the government can spend money on.
01:01So in order that the country doesn't grind to a halt next year,
01:05President Macron will nominate a new prime minister in the next few days,
01:09whose main priority will be to roll over the 2024 budget into the first few months of 2025.
01:17If he manages to pick a prime minister who can form a government that can command parliamentary support,
01:22then they'll look again at changing the budget for the next year.
01:25The mandate you democratically gave me is a five-year mandate, and I will carry it out fully until the end.
01:33After that no-confidence vote and the collapse of the government,
01:36Emmanuel Macron, the president, was under extreme pressure to resign himself,
01:41but there's no law that requires him to resign,
01:43and he's saying here that he will stay on regardless of what happens until his term ends in spring 2027.