François Bayrou: All parties except two in government

Almost a week after his appointment, the new French Prime Minister François Bayrou on Thursday invited the political forces, with the exception of LFI and the RN, and offered them to join his government, saying he was ready to “resume” pension reform.

According to the Prime Minister’s services and several participants in these talks, he tried to convince the thirty officials seated around him with two flagship proposals. The first: a “public offer of participation” in the government, addressed to all the parties present around the table.

The second: “resume without suspending” the pension reform adopted in 2023, which the left and the National Rally want to repeal.

However, there is no guarantee that the Prime Minister’s proposals will move the lines, as the reception of this summit meeting was cool among certain guests, even if all honored their participation.

The centrist succeeded Michel Barnier, overthrown after only three months in office by a historic censorship voted by deputies from the left and the far right.

François Bayrou thus became the sixth head of government since the first election of Emmanuel Macron in 2017 and the fourth in 2024, an instability of the executive that France had not experienced for decades.

Appointed on Friday, at the end of a tense morning in Emmanuel Macron’s office, François Bayrou has since received political leaders and parliamentarians in official or more informal meetings. But his first week in Matignon was above all marked by the barrage of criticism on his presence on the municipal council of Pau, a city of which he intends to remain mayor, in the midst of a crisis in Mayotte.

The new Prime Minister had to explain this during his first session in the National Assembly, without silencing the critics. All while increasing the number of trips to the Élysée for the formation of the government.

Emmanuel Macron being in Mayotte on Thursday, before then going to French troops in Djibouti, several actors are talking about a government announcement on Sunday. But the two houses of the French executive do not give any date.

In his letter to the parties, François Bayrou invokes, alongside the political and budgetary crisis, the situation of the Indian Ocean archipelago, which has suffered “probably the most serious natural disaster in the history of France for several centuries “.

Without a majority in the Assembly, the centrist, who has been advocating for decades a government bringing together various sensitivities, is currently facing the strong demands of the Republicans (LR) on the right and growing attempts at censorship on the left.

The format of the meeting convened Thursday by the Prime Minister is reminiscent of that of nine days ago around Emmanuel Macron at the Élysée, where scenarios of non-censorship of oppositions were discussed, in exchange for an absence of appeal in 49.3 by the government or dissolution by the president.

The Prime Minister only receives 36% satisfaction, according to an Ifop poll for Sud Radio on Thursday, compared to 52% and 53% for his predecessors Michel Barnier and Gabriel Attal, when they started at Matignon.