The Government of France has managed this Monday to overcome a motion of censure promoted by the Greens group, which intended to condemn the management of the Executive of Sebastian Lecornu in the face of the heatwave registered in the month of June.
The initiative only garnered the support of 132 deputies, a figure very far from the 289 votes necessary to bring down the French Government. The current Executive had already withstood several motions in recent years, although the then Prime Minister Michel Barnier did lose one at the end of 2024, which led to his dismissal.
On this occasion, the 'greens' proposal had the backing of the leftist party La France Insumisa (LFI), but it did not manage to secure the support of the National Rally, led by Marine Le Pen, nor the Socialist Party. This occurred despite the fact that its first secretary, Olivier Faure, had assured this very Monday that the socialists would join the censure against Lecornu's Executive.
The French Prime Minister has railed against the motion, considering that it intended to "instrumentalize the victims of the heatwave" and has reproached that it has been built on provisional data, in which deaths of a different nature would have been included as fatalities.
"Accusing the Government of having deaths on its conscience is not a warning. It is a mistake," he stated. "One can question the Government's action without instrumentalizing the victims. One can ask for more without claiming that nothing has ever been done," he added, emphasizing that there are "concrete and legitimate" questions about how to adapt France to climate change without turning them into a partisan weapon.
In this vein, Lecornu has accused the promoters of the motion of wanting to "test the balance of power within the left, pressure its different factions and distribute certificates of opposition for the presidential elections," according to the French newspaper 'Le Monde'.
The lack of support made it unfeasible for the motion to pass, but the debate has caused internal friction within socialism, after the deputies distanced themselves from the position announced by their leader, who had promised to support the censure as "a clear warning" to the Government for its "climate inaction."
"We share (...) the indignation over Emmanuel Macron's climate inaction, but the French expect solutions, rather than getting into a political crisis over this matter," the socialist group stated in a press release disseminated before the vote in the French National Assembly.