MoDem leader François Bayrou assured on Sunday that he was in favour of a “complete or almost complete” renewal of the government, while warning that a “takeover” by the Republicans of the executive of Prime Minister Michel Barnier “would not work”.
“I am in favour of a complete or almost complete renewal of the government so that we have another approach, another sensitivity, other faces,” declared Mr Bayrou on BFMTV, at a time when Michel Barnier is multiplying contacts to form his executive.
The Modem leader called on the head of government to take into account in the composition of his executive the “diversity” and “pluralism” resulting from the ballot boxes during the early legislative elections.
“The message of this election is that we need to gather our strength to face the challenges that lie ahead,” he explained, dismissing “the hypothesis” of a government dominated by Les Républicains, Michel Barnier’s political family.
If there was a “takeover”, “it could not work”, assured Mr. Bayrou, ruling out the possibility that the Modem would participate in an executive dominated by the right, and saying he did not believe that the Prime Minister could “lock himself into a hyper-minority partisan option.”
The president of the MoDem group in the Assembly, Marc Fesneau, had already spoken out this weekend, assuring in La Tribune Dimanche that a group of 47 deputies “cannot impose its policy”; as did the resigning minister Jean-Noël Barrot, also MoDem, who estimated in the JDD that the weight of LR in the government “cannot exceed that of its group in the National Assembly”.
The LR approved on Thursday the principle of participation in the government that Mr. Barnier, a member of their party, must form, appointed to Matignon by Emmanuel Macron two months after the legislative elections to try to resolve the political crisis linked to the absence of a majority.
The names of the main LR leaders (Laurent Wauquiez, Bruno Retailleau, Annie Genevard) are circulating for entry into government.
Appointed on September 5, Michel Barnier must announce the composition of his government “next week”.
arz/sl/as
