The French prime minister has said the country must stand firm in the face of figures such as Elon Musk, who represents a “new world disorder”.
In his first policy speech to parliament on Tuesday, François Bayrou, a veteran centrist, said there was “a new world disorder, that threatens all equilibrium and all rules of defence. There are a certain number of people who embody this without complex, such as Elon Musk.”
The tech billionaire, a close ally of the US president-elect, Donald Trump, is expected to play an influential role in Washington in the coming four years.
Bayrou cited what he called Trump’s “threats to annex sovereign territories, Greenland, the Panama canal, and even Canada”. He said it was for France to look at this “face on” and show such global powers “who were are”. France must be able to “express our determination”, he said.
On the domestic front, Bayrou, who became France’s fourth prime minister in a year when he took office a month ago, faces a challenge to get agreement on a long-overdue budget plan for 2025 and resolve bitter disputes over a 2023 pension reform.
Like his predecessor, the rightwing Michel Barnier, who lasted just three months before being brought down in a no-confidence vote, Bayrou lacks a majority in the national assembly. He could face a similar fate if he fails to win at least tacit backing from enough opposition MPs.
Under pressure to stop the Socialist party from taking part in another no-confidence vote, Bayrou said he was ready to reopen discussions on president Emmanuel Macron’s unpopular pensions changes, pushed through in 2023, which include a gradual increase in the retirement age from 62 to 64.
Bayrou said he had “decided to put this issue back on the table”, with talks with trade unions and employers’ groups “for a short time and under transparent conditions”. But he warned that if no agreement was reached, the 2023 pensions law would remain intact. He said: “The imbalance of our pension system and the massive debt it has created cannot be ignored or evaded.”
Bayrou also told the divided French parliament that tackling France’s spiralling public debt was essential. Debt, he said, was “a sword of Damocles over our country” that threatened France’s strong social security system.
He said: “Since the war, France has never in its history been as indebted as it is today … No policy of recovery and rebuilding can be made if it does not take into account our over-indebtedness and if it does not set the objective of containing and reducing it.”
Bayrou also proposed discussions on proportional representation for parliament elections, and said France should better control and regulate immigration.
