The government of François Bayrou is the first stage of the “Himalaya of difficulties” that the new Prime Minister will have to climb. The list of ministers is expected before the holidays, but the casting is far from obvious…
The essentials
- It is therefore a Bayrou government which will succeed the short-lived Barnier government. Appointed by the President of the Republic yesterday, François Bayrou must now compose his new team, which is expected before the holidays. A difficult casting, first step in the “Himalaya of difficulties” that he will have to climb in his own words yesterday, during the transfer of power with Michel Barnier to Matignon.
- The break in the government will perhaps not be so striking, François Bayrou having to deal with the same situation as his predecessor: trying to combine the right, the left outside the LFI, the centrists and the macronists around a common base. The poaching of certain figures from the Republicans and the PS will be difficult, but cannot be ruled out.
- The government of François Bayrou could thus retain a certain number of ministers from the previous government. Yesterday evening, Bruno Retailleau, the resigning Minister of the Interior, who had given pledges to the National Rally during his brief stay in Beauvau, was one of the first received by the new head of government.
- In his government, François Bayrou will also need followers. He could draw from among MoDem executives like Geneviève Darrieussecq, Jean-Noël Barrot, Sarah el Haïry, Marc Fesneau, or Philippe Vigier, other well-known faces, some of whom have already had responsibilities in recent years in the executive.
And directly
08:27 – What did François Bayrou and Bruno Retailleau say to each other?
The new Prime Minister therefore received the resigning Minister of the Interior Bruno Retailleau on Friday evening for a little over an hour. Matignon said that the interview focused on security, and in particular during the Pope's announced visit to Corsica on Sunday. The situation in Mayotte, which is preparing for the passage of a cyclone, was also put on the table. “The meeting made it possible to begin an essential discussion on the course to take to get France out of the institutional impasse,” nevertheless confided the entourage of the tenant of Beauvau to Figaroaffirming that other discussions are looming in the coming days.
08:04 – The news of the night: a first volunteer for the Bayrou government
Hello and welcome to this live broadcast devoted to the formation of François Bayrou's government. The news of the night: while his entourage revealed Friday evening that François Bayrou was going to increase consultations this weekend, the new Prime Minister received a first personality in the evening: the resigning Minister of the Interior, Bruno Retailleau . The latter would like to stay in office, but not at any price, according to the media's indiscreet following a long 1h15 interview.
13/12/24 – 23:36 – Employers welcome the appointment of François Bayrou to Matignon
END OF LIVE – From Medef to CPME via U2P, employers congratulated François Bayrou on his promotion while expressing the hope that his arrival at Matignon arouses for them. The CPME thus confided that it expected “that it creates the conditions allowing us to regain visibility, readability and stability”, while the U2P insisted on the importance of “giving visibility and confidence “to economic actors.
13/12/24 – 22:34 – The story of an ultimately surprise nomination
After the resignation of Michel Barnier on December 5, we wondered who would be able to take over, with the memory still very present of the two months of waiting this summer to find a new tenant in Matignon. From the very first hours, the name of François Bayrou was mentioned in the corridors of the Élysée and the Assembly, but without any certainty. We then addressed the question of Roland Lescure, Sébastien Lecornu and Bernard Cazeneuve.
The idea of François Bayrou becoming Prime Minister has been brought to the forefront, then swept aside, then re-emphasized several times in recent days. Enough to make the mayor of Pau lose hope, as some of his relatives confided to Parisian : he was “furious!” Friday, Emmanuel Macron received François Bayrou at the Élysée in the morning, for a meeting which lasted 1 hour 45 minutes during which Matignon's hopes were dashed for the MoDem deputy. Indeed, their exchange would have gone badly: “He has the impression that we are making fun of him, that we are taking him around”, explained one of his relatives in the morning, “François was in the mode: 'Remember- me or I make a misfortune.' He threatened to blow up the majority if it wasn’t him.” And while everyone, politicians and journalists, turned to Lescure, Lecornu or Cazeneuve, it was François Bayrou who was called to form a government.
13/12/24 – 9:36 p.m. – François Bayrou congratulated by Ursula von der Leyen
The President of the European Union Commission congratulated François Bayrou on his appointment this Friday. “You have always had Europe at heart. Let’s all work together for a stronger, more competitive Europe that has the means to defend itself,” Ursula von der Leyen wrote on X.
13/12/24 – 9:09 p.m. – Former Minister of Education, François Bayrou, awaited at the turning point by the educational world
Minister of Education from 1993 to 1997, François Bayrou will have to quickly get up to speed, it is felt in the world of education, where caution seems rather in order. “It has been almost 30 years since [son] transition to National Education… The context has changed and since then, it has not marked the public debate on the School”, points out the general secretary of the SNES-FSU, Sophie Vénétitay, whose The Parisian echoes. François Bayrou will therefore have to “quickly take stock of the seriousness of the situation for a School in the process of collapsing”.
The appointment of a new Prime Minister will not change anything, even if a new stage is launched. The political crisis that France has been going through since this summer is not ready to end. The resignation of Michel Barnier, imposed by the censorship of the government voted by the deputies on December 4, reminded those who had forgotten that the executive has always been very fragile. Emmanuel Macron's choice to appoint Michel Barnier to Matignon, after a failed dissolution, gave the keys to the National Rally. Without the implicit support or laissez-faire of the RN, the next government will not last much longer. The government is facing political and arithmetic reality: its line is very much in the minority in the National Assembly, the deputies of the opposition parties are more numerous than those of the “common base” parties.
Emmanuel Macron had also prepared for the fall of Michel Barnier's government at the end of November, based on numerous indiscretions. He had started testing the names of potential replacements even before the censorship. The choice of François Bayrou ultimately gives the signal that he remains on the same line as before: for him, it is the ability to ensure stability that is important, by working with the parties of the “republican arc”, without suffer the censorship of others. In doing so, Emmanuel Macron reconnects with this tacit deal with Marine Le Pen which led to the fall of the Barnier government.
A “disinterested and pluralist” Bayrou government?
François Bayrou has a precise idea of the strategy which seems to him to be the right one in this period of political crisis with a National Assembly lacking a sufficient majority to govern alone. The centrist has been pleading for months for the formation of a “disinterested, pluralist and coherent government” made up of “personalities of character”, without specifying the political sides which could or could not take part in it, as Le Figaro recalls. A vision that matches that proposed by Emmanuel Macron.
François Bayrou's government should unsurprisingly include Democrats and Macronists, but it could also open up to the right and the left on the condition that these forces agree to join the executive. Something difficult to imagine for the left: the PS and the Ecologists refused to participate in a government led by a Prime Minister foreign to the left. On the other hand, the appointment of right-wing ministers, or even the maintenance of certain resigned LR ministers such as Sébastien Lecornu or Bruno Retailleau, are mentioned. The LR party did not object to joining a Bayrou government, but refused to participate in an executive in which socialists would be appointed. During his handover speech with Michel Barnier, this Friday on the steps of Matignon, the new Prime Minister did not give the slightest clue about the composition of his government. We will still have to wait.
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