The French parliament will hold a vote of no confidence in the govenment of Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne. Proposed by the leftist coalition NUPES, the motion is not likely to pass, but it highlights the difficult path ahead for President Emmanuel Macron as he begins his second term.
French politics has entered a period of instability following parliamentary elections last month that saw the ruling party of recently re-elected President Emmanuel Macron fall short of an absolute majority by 39 seats.
Without formal allies in the 577-seat national assembly, Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne decided not to call a confidence vote on her policy speech last Wednesday - something almost all past prime ministers have done after their first appearances in the lower house.
France Unbowed - one of the big gainers in June's parliamentary polls - immediately filed a no-confidence motion along with its Socialist (PS), Communist (PCF) and Green allies known as the NUPES alliance.
"Without a confidence vote, we have no choice but to file this motion of defiance," the group text read.
Jean-Luc Melenchon, leader of the far-left France Unbowed, criticised Borne saying she "offered nothing that would allow us to find compromises".
Borne has already ruled out working with his party, as well as Le Pen's anti-immigration National Rally.
Mistrust
The leader of the LFI deputies, Mathilde Panot, hopes to make Monday's vote a demonstration of "mistrust" towards Borne.
"It probably won't pass but it's important to make ourselves heard," Panot told BFM television.
The motion has almost no chance of succeeding due to lack of support from the far-right National Rally (RN) and right-wing Republicans (LR) groups.
LFI will speak first on Monday, before the intervention of the Prime Minister and then the other groups for a two-and- a-half hour debate.
Only MPs in favor of the motion will participate in the vote.
To bring down the government would require an absolute majority of 289 votes, impossible to achieve for the NUPES alone.
They are 151 in tota, but the socialist Dominique Potier did not sign the text.
It is uncertain that all the signatories will be present.
'Sabotage'
Far-right leader Marine Le Pen reiterated on Sunday that her RN group, did not support the motion.
"La Nupes does not defend the interests of the French; what they want is to sabotage the Republic".
Government spokesman Olivier Véran described the move as "posturing" and said that Jean-Luc Mélenchon must accept that the second five-year term has begun and the "the electoral phase is now behind us".
"He has, with the LFI movement, some 80 deputies. That's 200 less that what is necessary to have a majority, and he continues to pretend that he has somehow won," he told RTL radio on Sunday.
"He represents the the opposition party and we respect him for that and in return, we are asking him to respect what French people voted for and let parliament get on with the job it was mandated to do".
According to LREM deputy Karl Olive, the motion "will be a flop", showing that Mélenchon, whom he sees behind this initiative, has "the absolute minority".
His Macronist colleague Sacha Houlié also criticised a "waste" of time, far from the concerns of the French.
