Left-Wing Parties Launch Impeachment Proceedings Against Macron

By Laurent Geslin

(EurActiv) -- An impeachment procedure brought against French President Emmanuel Macron by the far-left La France insoumise (LFI) was deemed admissible by the bureau of the National Assembly on Tuesday (17 September), by 12 votes to 10.

The move, the first of its kind in the history of the Fifth Republic, has no realistic chance of succeeding, though the result of Tuesday’s vote was expected given the left-wing Nouveau Front Populaire (NFP), which includes LFI, hold a majority in the bureau, the National Assembly’s highest collegiate authority.

The procedure was launched to denounce Macron’s “unprecedented authoritarian drift in the world of parliamentary regimes and in the system of representative democracy,”a petition, signed by over 300,000 people, states.

Over the summer, the President of the Republic refused to allow NFP candidate Lucie Castets to form a government, despite NFP winning the most seats in July’s legislative elections. Veteran right-winger Michel Barnier was eventually appointed prime minister earlier this month.

The potential impeachment of Emmanuel Macron will now have to be examined by the Assembly’s Law Committee, before being put to the vote in the wider parliament.

To be adopted, the text must be approved by two-thirds of MPs – 385 out of 577. If the resolution passes the Assembly hurdle, it must then be sent to the Senate, where right-wing parties and their centrist allies have a majority.

It is therefore mathematically impossible for the impeachment of Macron to be adopted, especially as the president of the Rassemblement National (RN) in the National Assembly, Marine Le Pen,denouncedthe move as a “sinister comedy“ orchestrated by the left, accusing them of spreading “disorder and chaos“.

However, LFI MPs, including Antoine Léaument, were quick towelcomeTuesday’s vote as a necessary “parliamentary riposte”. For his part, party leader Jean-Luc Mélanchoncalledfor demonstrations across France on Saturday 21 September “to depose Macron“.

Former Prime Minister Gabriel Attal, now leader of the presidential party’s group of MPs in the National Assembly, desrcribed “this motion and this debate” as “a declaration of war on our institutions”.