Emmanuel Macron on Thursday appointed the former minister and former right-wing European Commissioner Michel Barnier, 73, as prime minister, the Elysée announced 60 days after the second round of legislative elections which resulted in a National Assembly without a majority.
The oldest Prime Minister of the Fifth Republic thus succeeds Gabriel Attal, 35, who was the youngest, appointed only eight months ago and resigned 51 days ago, at Matignon. He will have to try to form a government capable of surviving a parliamentary censure, to put an end to the most serious political crisis since 1958.
The president “tasked him with forming a unifying government to serve the country and the French people,” the Elysée Palace said in a statement. Emmanuel Macron “ensured that the Prime Minister and the future government would meet the conditions to be as stable as possible and give themselves the chance to unite as broadly as possible,” the presidency added.
Michel Barnier, who was also an unsuccessful candidate in the primary of the Les Républicains party for the 2022 presidential election, inherits a task that seems like an impossible mission, as no viable coalition has emerged so far.
In the meantime, the resigning ministers will remain in office to continue to manage current affairs while negotiations take place.
A veteran politician, Michel Barnier is known as a good mediator: he was the European Union’s chief negotiator for Brexit when the United Kingdom left the continental bloc. Before that, he served as a minister on several occasions since 1993, notably under the presidencies of Jacques Chirac and Nicolas Sarkozy.
More recently, when he was eyeing the Elysée, this centrist Gaullist had toughened his discourse on immigration, advocating a “moratorium” and going so far, as a convinced European, as to call into question the European Court of Justice in the name of “legal sovereignty”.
The Elysée Palace has repeatedly rejected an appointment during the consultations conducted by Emmanuel Macron. And had exhausted several other cartridges, from Bernard Cazeneuve on the left to Xavier Bertrand on the right, including the president of the Economic, Social and Environmental Council Thierry Beaudet for civil society.
Former Prime Minister Bernard Cazeneuve, who left the Socialist Party, assured shortly before the announcement of this nomination that he had accepted being appointed to Matignon out of “duty”.
He called on the president to “resolve to the results of the election and then let the government govern.”
Emmanuel Macron and his strategists had defined two criteria to finally endorse a personality: “his +non-censorability+”, that is to say the guarantee that his government will not be immediately overthrown by the Assembly, and his capacity to form a “coalitation”, a Macronist neologism to evoke a mixture of coalition and cohabitation.
The head of state had indeed acknowledged that his camp had lost the elections. It was the New Popular Front that came out on top, but far from an absolute majority, ahead of the presidential bloc and the National Rally.
Since then, the left-wing alliance ranging from La France Insoumise to the Socialists has been demanding to govern, but in August Emmanuel Macron dismissed its candidate, senior civil servant Lucie Castets, believing that she was doomed to certain censorship.
– The RN will judge “on the basis of the evidence” –
Is Michel Barnier assured of the viability of his future executive? Nothing is less certain.
On the left, the leader of the socialist deputies Boris Vallaud recalled on France 2 that the right would be “subject to a sanction because it will be for implementing a right-wing policy”.
The leader of the deputies of La France Insoumise, Mathilde Panot, accused the head of state of not respecting with this nomination “popular sovereignty” and the “choice resulting from the ballot boxes”.
“We know in the end who decides: her name is Marine Le Pen. It is to her that Macron has decided to submit,” castigated the national secretary of the Ecologists, Marine Tondelier.
The far-right party, which threatened Bernard Cazeneuve and Xavier Bertrand with immediate censure, must now define its position.
The RN, which could at any time bring down the future government with the NFP, “will judge its general policy discourse on its merits”, declared this time the party president, Jordan Bardella.
As for this “smell of cohabitation” that Emmanuel Macron’s entourage was looking for to embody a form of alternation, it is not with Michel Barnier that it should be the most intoxicating. He came from a pro-European right and considered “pragmatic”, and he has often been considered “Macron-compatible”.
The head of state “was looking for a clone, he ended up finding one”, joked communist Ian Brossat on BFMTV, who sees in this choice “the promise of absolute continuity”.
In recent days, several sources, including among his supporters, have detected in the president a reluctance to truly turn towards the centre-left, for fear of seeing his economic record unravelled.”
The presidential camp should participate in the Barnier government or at least support it.
“He is very popular with right-wing MPs without being an irritant on the left,” enthuses a resigning minister from the right wing of Macronie. “We have to know how to deal with it,” tempers a centrist leader, with much less enthusiasm.
Several Macronists thus seem almost resigned, telling themselves that Michel Barnier is the lowest common denominator and that, given his age, he should not scare off all those who dream of running for the Elysée in 2027. “I am at the stage where I think that the absolute emergency for the president is that he appoints someone. I am no longer even at the stage of giving an opinion,” said a confidant of Emmanuel Macron just before the official announcement.
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