CGTN Europe spoke to freelance journalist Jamie Smith-Maillet.
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00:00Now, Jamie Smith-Mayer is a French freelance journalist joining us now.
00:04Jamie, thank you so much for your time.
00:07How much support is there for Bayrou's new cabinet,
00:10particularly for the new finance minister, Eric Lombard?
00:16Yeah, indeed, well, the new cabinet has been awaited now.
00:19Just before Christmas, it was said, Sally, that the cabinet would be announced.
00:22And of course, the announcement came yesterday.
00:24Now, support for the cabinet has been somewhat divided, shall we say,
00:29and much like the National Assembly, as you were mentioning there,
00:32since the divided National Assembly came into play back in June,
00:35following the snap election.
00:37Across the board, we have heard from left parties that the cabinet itself
00:42does not necessarily represent what was hoped with Bayrou.
00:46And that would be a cabinet made up of centrist leaders
00:50from the left, right through to the right.
00:52In fact, we've heard from left-wing parties saying that this is not a government,
00:56this is simply a provocation.
00:58And on the far right, the National Rally has also said that this is in no way
01:04a cabinet that would be fit to see things forward.
01:07And they will be questioning as well and waiting to see
01:11how things will pan out in the weeks ahead.
01:13Of course, you did mention there Eric Lombard,
01:16who has been appointed among the new appointments to this cabinet
01:20as the Minister for Finance.
01:22Now, he himself has had a career in finance,
01:25or in close to decisions relating to the budget, we could say,
01:31by working as the director of the Caisse du Depot,
01:34which is the public-funded bank for public infrastructures.
01:39So what will be hoped here with his appointments, in any case,
01:42is to bring forward a sense of reassurances to financial markets
01:46that France will be figuring out its challenging,
01:50as you mentioned there, burgeoning deficit problems going into 2025.
01:56So Parliament is in recess until January 13th.
01:59Already criticisms of this new government.
02:02What is going to be the first order of business for this new cabinet
02:05when they get back?
02:08Well, we do know that François Bayoud, the new Prime Minister,
02:12will be setting out his agenda on the 14th of January.
02:16But the first big hurdle, in any case,
02:18will be this question about the budget.
02:21Now, emergency measures, emergency legislation,
02:24pushed through the 2024 budget to carry it through into 2025.
02:29And Bayoud has said that he would hope there would be a new budget
02:33on the table by mid-February, and that's the 2025 budget.
02:37This will be the biggest hurdle yet,
02:40and that is due mostly to the deficit levels,
02:43which are projected to rise around to about 6.1% of public debt
02:48in the year 2025.
02:49Bayoud has said he'd like to pull that back to 5%.
02:53And the questions will be around how will he do that?
02:57Well, he is looking at cutting public spending
03:01and also ensuring further investment in France
03:03by pulling that back to that 5% level.
03:06But given the way that the National Assembly is currently sitting
03:10with those three blocks,
03:11it still looks like it's going to be a huge challenge
03:14and will be an issue that could potentially lead to this new government
03:18also falling in the weeks or months ahead,
03:20which, of course, he would wish to avoid.
03:23That will be probably the biggest topic of discussion in the coming weeks.
03:27That's for sure.
03:29All right.
03:30So keeping the cabinet together is going to be a massive challenge.
03:34What happens if they don't survive until parliamentary elections in July?
03:40Well, we do know that the far-hard-left party,
03:44France Insoumise, has already said that they wish to lodge
03:47a vote of no confidence in this new government,
03:50and that is already to be tabled potentially on 16 January.
03:54Now, it depends how things pan out there.
03:56Obviously, the party alone voting for a new vote of no confidence
04:01in this new cabinet would not gain an overall vote in Parliament
04:07and would need the support of other parties.
04:08What we saw before with the far-right bringing down the government of Michel Barnier.
04:16So there is still a risk of this happening in the weeks ahead.
04:20The other things, factually, that we do know, however,
04:23is that the National Assembly itself cannot be dissolved again
04:27until at least June, July time,
04:29a year on from the previous dissolution of the National Assembly by Emmanuel Macron.
04:36So there is a risk of this cabinet once again falling,
04:40although we'll just have to see how things play out in the weeks ahead
04:44with the budget, the first talk of discussion,
04:46but also this new cabinet looking for consensus
04:50and compromise across the board from left to right.
04:53At the moment in time, with the new figures in Parliament,
04:56it is mostly the left-wing party that does feel snubbed
05:00without much representation from the Socialist Party across the board.
05:04So there is a real question as to how long
05:07and whether there will be stability in the time ahead.
05:09And political commentators here in France are saying that this cabinet,
05:13as it stands, does look very much as fragile as the last one.