France will have a new prime minister as of Thursday, although no one knows for how long. Emmanuel Macron, the President of the Republic, has decided, two months after the legislative elections, that the new tenant of Matignon will be the conservative Michel Barnier, former minister and former European commissioner, also known for having been the European negotiator of Brexit. The appointment puts an end to weeks of predictions, pumpkins on the right and left and, above all, names that were burned at the stake of the three large political blocs that emerged from the last elections and were deeply divided. Barnier will be the fifth prime minister of the Macron era. Also the one with the most uncertain future. “It is a serious moment,” he admitted in his first words in the courtyard of Matignon.
“There will be changes and ruptures,” the new prime minister announced at his inauguration. “And we will have to listen and show a lot of respect. Between the government and Parliament, also towards all political forces, and I mean all,” he said, clearly referring to the RN and La France Insoumise.
The last few weeks have brought back to France the aroma of the Fourth Republic, the times when the blockade and ungovernability punished the country. Macron wanted citizens to express themselves at the polls, and on July 7 the results of the legislative elections were known. The elections, the result of a controversial and misunderstood dissolution of the National Assembly, left a political panorama fragmented into three blocks. The New Popular Front (NFP), the coalition formed by left-wing parties to confront the rise of the far right, became the first force in the National Assembly with 193 of 577 deputies, although it was far from the absolute majority of 289. The presidential bloc, formed by three centre and centre-right parties, obtained 166; and the far-right National Rally (RN), 126. After the initial euphoria at having contained the advance of the far right, the majority of political forces understood that France was facing a blockade.
51 days after Macron accepted Gabriel Attal’s resignation, the head of state has resolved the issue – at least provisionally – by appointing Barnier as the new prime minister and tasked with forming a government. The only question now is whether Barnier, a proven pro-European, member of the conservative Republicans (LR) party and particularly rigid on the immigration issue, will receive sufficient support in the National Assembly to carry out his project. His appointment violently contravenes the left’s effort to curb the far right in the last elections, even withdrawing its candidates in some constituencies in favour of the presidential majority that Macron had put together.
The New Popular Front, which included La France Insoumise, the Ecologists, the Communist Party and the Socialist Party, came out on top. But instead of being able to elect a prime minister – its nominee was Lucie Castets, a semi-unknown technician – it now sees that the new tenant of Matignon is a conservative from the Republicans.
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The decision has been received with deep bitterness by the NFP and some of its members, such as Jean Luc Melénchon, have already promised to fight it in Parliament and on the streets, where a demonstration against Macron is planned for Saturday. But the more moderate wing of the alliance, the Socialist Party led by Olivier Faure, does not intend to swallow the decision either. “Democratic denial taken to its apogee: a prime minister from the party that came in fourth place and who did not even participate in the republican front. We are entering a regime crisis,” he posted on his social networks.
A two-time minister in France – under Jacques Chirac and Nicolas Sarkozy – he was also three times a European commissioner. On his social media account X, he introduces himself as a “European patriot”. The last major mission of the veteran politician, born 73 years ago in the town of La Tronche, in the foothills of the French Alps, was to lead the negotiations for the United Kingdom’s exit from the European Union. This is an experience that will serve him well now in trying to temporise with the opposing political forces and with Macron himself, who was not enthusiastic about cohabitation with a prime minister from another party or someone with his own agenda. There was no alternative.
In 2021, he unsuccessfully tried to be a presidential candidate for the Republicans, a party in which he remains a member despite its slow process of decomposition. In an interview with this newspaper a year ago, he assured that he did not have a personal agenda and that he wanted to “cultivate and cultivate” alliances to stop what he calls the “adventure of the extreme right”. Now, curiously, it will be that political spectrum that will decide whether he can develop his adventure as a tenant of Matignon and face urgent problems such as the preparation of a new budget and the adjustment of accounts demanded by Brussels.
Le Pen’s protagonism
The far-right leader Marine Le Pen has unexpectedly become the key to this long and televised process. Silent at first, sidelined from the consultations and isolated by the other parties, she has gained prominence in recent days when Macron finally understood that he would not be able to break up the left-wing bloc. Le Pen has taken advantage of her election result (she is the party with the most votes, despite being the third force in Parliament, if we look at the blocs formed for the elections) and has spoken out about all the names. First she got rid of the conservative Xavier Bertrand, also the ex-socialist Bernard Cazeneuve in a less clear way, and even Thierry Beaudet, a technical profile that Macron lik
ed, but who had spoken badly of his party in the past. All of them had been hostile to his party or to her. And until the leader of the RN did not give her thumbs up, the head of state had to remain glued to the phone, prolonging an exhausting casting.
The RN has already announced through some of the deputies who parade daily on the television talk shows that there will be no direct or immediate censure. They will listen to his programme to decide whether to veto his project through a motion of censure. And above all, and this will be the most interesting, they will closely observe the type of Executive he will put together. In any case, Le Pen has already made explicit her three main conditions to Macron in order not to overthrow her candidate, and they serve Barnier well: stop being treated as “outcasts”, implement a reform of the electoral law to move to a proportional system and pay special attention to the issues of security, immigration and the purchasing power of the French. “Sixty days after the second round of the legislative elections, Michel Barnier is appointed Prime Minister. As we had announced to the President of the Republic, we will demand that the new head of government respect the 11 million French people who voted for the Rassemblement National, that he respect their persons and their ideas,” the RN leader posted on the social network X.
Barnier, the oldest prime minister in the history of the Republic – the youngest was his predecessor Attal – dined on Wednesday at the Elysée with Macron, who wanted to hear his ideas first-hand. He is an experienced politician, considered by most to be a statesman and with a very proven international profile. His tough position on illegal immigration could help him win over Le Pen. In the last primaries of the Republicans, he proposed a referendum to decide on the reform of immigration laws. Without a doubt, he will need her complicity – or tolerance – to survive longer than his predecessor and prevent the next head in danger from being that of the head of state, Emmanuel Macron.
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