2024-01-10 16:30:06
The resignation letter sent this Monday, January 8, by Elisabeth Borne to the President of the Republic illustrates an unconstitutional practice of institutions: the behavior of political actors is in contradiction with what legal standards provide.
The terms of the letter are unambiguous. It begins like this: “You told me of your desire to appoint a new prime minister” to end with “While I must present the resignation of my government, I wanted to tell you how passionate I was about this mission…”
These formulas contrast with the terms of Article 8 of the Constitution relating to the appointment and resignation of the Prime Minister. According to this article, if “the President of the Republic appoints the Prime Minister”, « he terminates his functions upon the presentation by him of the resignation of the government ». Reading the constitutional text, it is therefore up to the Prime Minister to decide to resign and not to be forced to resign, as betrayed – quite deliberately, obviously – by the terms of the letter sent by Elisabeth Borne to Emmanuel Macron .
A “blank” letter
More generally, we can only be surprised by the gap that separates the provisions of the Constitution of certain behaviors of political actors. Thus article 5 of the Constitution, which confers on the President of the Republic an arbitration role in order to ensure the regular functioning of public authorities, while the latter, far from being an arbiter, is a political leader who intends to carry out the program on which he was elected. Thus article 20, which provides that the government determines and conducts the policy of the nation, while in practice it is the President of the Republic who is in charge. This is also the case with the second paragraph of Article 8, which specifies that the Prime Minister proposes to the President the members of his government, whereas they are most often imposed on him by the latter.
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Of course, these practices are not new. It is often said that, on the day of his appointment, the Prime Minister signs a letter of resignation ” in white “ who will thus be at the disposal of the President of the Republic. In this case, it will be noted that the terms of Elisabeth Borne’s resignation letter are very close to those used by Michel Rocard in 1991, who did not hesitate to recognize, a few years later, that he had been purely and simply dismissed by the President of the Republic.
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