Nearly two months after the legislative elections, Emmanuel Macron’s choice fell on Michel Barnier on Thursday, September 5. The former right-wing European Commissioner will thus succeed Gabriel Attal as Prime Minister. According to the Élysée, the head of state has ensured that the next government “meets the conditions to be as stable as possible.”
It therefore took Emmanuel Macron 60 days to make his choice, after considering several names, 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”.
Although Michel Barnier has, on several occasions, been seen as “Macron-compatible”, the former chief negotiator of the European Union has not always been kind to the president.
• La dissolution, un “moment Frexit”
First, Michel Barnier recently expressed reservations about Emmanuel Macron’s decision to dissolve the National Assembly, which he described as a “very risky bet”.
“We have to be very careful about what might happen in France,” he told the Telegraph, calling on the French to “look at what has happened in the UK since Brexit”.
According to him, Emmanuel Macron has triggered a “Frexit moment” in France.
• Macronism “is destined to disappear”
Michel Barnier has also been very critical of Macronism on several occasions. After the results of the 2022 legislative elections, where the presidential camp lost its absolute majority in the National Assembly, Michel Barnier maintained that “Macronism, this central power adept at ‘at the same time’ which wanted to erase everything between itself and the extremes, is destined to disappear in 2027”.
“The strategy chosen by Emmanuel Macron for the past seven years, consisting of creating a nebulous central bloc and creating a vacuum on both his right and his left, has led to the disappearance of government parties. ‘At the same time’ cannot be a response to public insecurity,” he also said the following year to Le Figaro.
More recently, the man who has been a minister on several occasions in right-wing governments estimated that “the day after the European elections will be the first day of the rest of Macron’s rule”.
According to Michel Barnier, “one of Emmanuel Macron’s characteristics is to want to choose his opponents. It is a sign of great feverishness on his part. In previous elections, he failed.”
In 2022 in any case, the Republican “totally” ruled out the idea of joining Emmanuel Macron’s camp. “Attempts at poaching or individual rallying are derisory and useless. This is not relevant. Poaching may have proven tactically clever in seeking to eliminate the two major social-democratic and centre-right forces, it is politically dangerous,” he explained to Le Figaro.
Furthermore, Michel Barnier stated that he was not a candidate in the European elections in order to “renew faces and rejuvenate ideas”.
• The way of running the country, “lonely” and “arrogant”
Since Emmanuel Macron’s first term, the now new Prime Minister has deplored the “method” of the head of state and his way of exercising power. On many occasions, Michel Barnier considered that the President of the Republic worked in a “too solitary” manner, lacking “humility”, and sometimes even being “arrogant”.
The “management of this country” should be “less solitary, less arrogant”. “Nothing obliges, under the Fifth Republic, the president (…) to act alone, to speak alone”, he told Le Figaro in 2021.
While he was a right-wing candidate in the primaries for the 2022 presidential election, Michel Barnier believed that during the first five-year term, “our country was not well governed: the president must preside, the government must govern, Parliament must be listened to and respected. There must be trust between mayors, departments, regions and the executive branch and everyone must be in their place”. Michel Barnier has often stated that the social partners were not sufficiently listened to and considered.
After the 2022 elections, he called on Macron’s party to “show that they have understood” and to move “from the culture of arrogance to the culture of compromise”, denouncing a “vertical government”.
“We must know and love the French and France, its history and its geography. We must respect them and make France respected. The outgoing president did not know how to do all that. It is not at the Élysée that we learn,” he castigated.
• The policies implemented, a “major downgrade”
Beyond the form, Michel Barnier has sometimes had harsh criticisms of the policies pursued by the presidential camp. He has notably deplored the “great downgrading of France”, estimating that “French influence, in France and in the world, has declined with Emmanuel Macron”.
During his 2021 campaign, for example, he deplored “the destruction of family policy by Presidents Hollande and Macron.”
According to Michel Barnier, Emmanuel Macron “forgets” important subjects in his policy. The new Prime Minister mentions in particular rurality, immigration issues, security and people with disabilities. “(LR) made interesting proposals (on this subject, Editor’s note) and the door was slammed in our faces, the French no longer want all that”, he quoted for example.
On Franceinfo, in 2022, the new Prime Minister held Emmanuel Macron “responsible for the collapse of our foreign trade, the explosion of our debt and our deficit, unemployment, insecurity…”.
- BFMTV.com
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