“All good ideas will not only come from him”: how did Michel Barnier prepare his general policy speech?

Nothing filters… Not even the place where Michel Barnier wrote his general policy declaration. In Matignon? At home in Paris?

At most, his advisors tell us that the Prime Minister does not live very far from his new office on rue de Varenne, suggesting numerous trips back and forth.

This simple information is given to us like a state secret. As for knowing who participated in the brainstorming and what form it took, impossible.

“He was taking notes.”

His visitors assure us that the former European commissioner was just as secretive in front of them. “He took notes, gave no opinion,” remembers one of them.

To find out more, you have to analyze the agenda of his last days. The Prime Minister received all the political forces, then the social partners and employer representatives.

“He also received personalities from the academic world”complete his advisors without any name leaking. “What is certainthey assure usis that all the good ideas will not come only from him”.

Michel Barnier and his advisers listen but they also keep an eye on the polls, but they have noticed that Bruno Retailleau’s recent statements had hit the mark. Matthieu Hebert, the pen of Michel Barnier, who follows him from the European Commission, will have to remember this.

“Offs” reported in the press

He will also have to take into account the remarks of Emmanuel Macron, who received his Prime Minister on Monday September 30 to discuss the speech of the day. Matignon assures that the Élysée has not expressed any requirements even concerning the reserved domain.

“It’s a speech with national scope,” specify the Prime Minister’s men. Way to say that the President has no say. In recent times, however, the Élysée has not held back from suggesting, via “offs” reported in the press, that the line adopted was not satisfactory.

“We are focused, very concentrated. We don’t worry about the little sentences”sweep away the “Barnier’s boys”.