CGTN Europe speaks to Anne-Elisabeth Moutet, a French journalist and commentator, about the country's new government cabinet and the work that is cut out for it.
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00:00I'm pleased to say that Anne-Elisabeth Moutet is a French journalist and commentator who joins us now.
00:05Anne-Elisabeth, France's fourth government this year then and bitter political conflict
00:11throughout Parliament. What chance does this government have under Baruch?
00:17I would not be too optimistic except that there might be a kind of political exhaustion
00:23and people have seen so many changes and each time was more stressful than the previous one.
00:30But at the same time you have members of a coalition or at least an array of representatives
00:39party which is a little bit wider than Michel Barnier because it's got several former members
00:44of the Socialist Party, non-current members of the Socialist Party, so that the idea was
00:50to have people from the centre, from the republican right and to have people from
00:57the sort of moderate left which means the Socialist Party but not the alliance that
01:03won about one third of the seats and which is led by La France Insoumise, the hard left party of
01:09Jean-Luc MĂ©lenchon. This is a lot of strange names but what it means is that the hard left have
01:15immediately said that this government would base a vote of no confidence the minute they
01:21tried to pass a law which is really a problem because the budget is still not through
01:26and because the left demands together with the hard right of Marine Le Pen
01:33the reform or a change of the law making French pensions slightly less generous than they were
01:42before and that means that after the holidays anything goes and it's really going to be up to
01:49François Béroud, a man who's 73 years old who started in politics in the 70s and who has less
01:56charisma and certainly less foreign experience, international experience than Michel Barnier,
02:03the former European Commissioner and Brexit negotiator, so I'm not optimistic for this
02:09government. Okay and you mentioned some of those interesting appointments there but would you say
02:15that perhaps President Macron himself faces some problems from public sentiment?
02:22President Macron is deeply unpopular, he doesn't want to cope with it, he's very unhappy about it,
02:28he takes it very personally and unfortunately some of it is directed personally. He has been
02:34seen for seven years, he was elected in 1922, next year is going to be eighth anniversary of
02:41the time he got to power, he was re-elected once, he can't run again and he has been a lame duck
02:48president with ever worse returns. I would say since the 2018 yellow vest crisis there's a
02:56feeling of remoteness, there's a feeling of contempt for the general public, there's a
03:02sort of lecturing style that does not work but he doesn't change it and we saw this only recently
03:08in the hurricane hit island of Mayotte in the Indian Ocean when Macron went there to be with
03:16the people who had lost their homes, had lost members of the families and he was
03:22filmed lecturing people because they disagreed with him. It's not a good look and I think
03:28essentially he does not want to resign yet, he cannot call another snap election like he did
03:34last year because there has to be an interval of one year between two snap elections called by
03:41the president and therefore he's stuck, he's between a rock and a hard place on this one.
03:45Yeah definitely, so he also has to deal with the budget in 2025 as well and Elizabeth Moutet, we
03:51would love to talk about this more, we're out of time but French journalist and commentator
03:56thank you very much for your time.