By joining Matignon, François Bayrou becomes the third Prime Minister from the South-West and the former Aquitaine, after Jacques Chaban-Delmas (1969-1972) and Alain Juppé (1995-1997), both mayors of Bordeaux, the regional capital. By retrospectively expanding the borders of the region to current Nouvelle-Aquitaine, we will add the Corrézien Jacques Chirac (1974-1976 and 1986-1988) as well as the one who was its head of government from 2002 to 2005, the Poitevin Jean- Pierre Raffarin.
Jacques Chirac, Jacques Chaban-Delmas and Alain Juppé, here during the 1995 presidential campaign.
C. VIOUJARD/ARCHIVES SO
The fact remains that the Béarnais, if we put aside his career as party leader of the CDS (Center of Social Democrats) at the MoDem and his mandate as a European deputy from July 1999 to June 2002, is the only one who displays such local electoral roots as its roots. Born in Bordères (64) into a family of farmers, the future associate professor of classics was always elected in his native territory. Whether as general advisor from 1982 to 2008 with the presidency of the Department from 1992 to 2001; as a deputy, elected for the first time in 1986 and defeated in 2012 by the socialist Nathalie Chabanne, when he had voted for François Hollande against Nicolas Sarkozy in the second round of the presidential election; and of course as an elected official from Pau in 1989 after facing PS mayor André Labarrère, then becoming mayor in 2014 and again in 2020.
His distant predecessor in Matignon, Jacques Chaban-Delmas, had no link with the region other than his resistance name, borrowed from the Château de Chaban in Dordogne. And he only landed in Bordeaux because he was looking for an electoral base. He had a hollow nose since he remained at the Palais-Rohan from 1947 to 1995.
Minister of Juppé
His successor, Alain Juppé, was certainly born in Mont-de-Marsan and studied there until his baccalaureate before going into exile on the banks of the Seine for the ENA and Normale Sup. After an unfortunate electoral attempt in the city of his birth, he then carried out his professional and political career in Paris, with Jacques Chirac who did not hesitate for a minute to appoint him to Matignon until the failed dissolution of 1997. One of his ministers, in charge of National Education, was called François Bayrou.
The promotion of Chaban to Matignon by Georges Pompidou was less smooth and less cordial. The two men were not alike and liked each other even less, but the president had little choice. The Head of State almost chokes when he hears his Prime Minister promise a New Society, the name of his political project, during his general policy speech. A speech which, on the other hand, still inspires politicians today, including François Bayrou.
The relationship between Bayrou and Macron should be halfway between the two previous ones. Between them, a complicity which excludes neither annoyance nor bickering as well as the distrust of a president towards an old world Prime Minister who did not wait for him to be elected. But Pompidou had this large majority, the one that Macron no longer has since 2022. That changes everything.
