President Emmanuel Macron has named Michel Barnier, the European Union’s former Brexit negotiator, as France’s new prime minister after more than 50 days of a caretaker government.
Macron held talks with the veteran politician at the Elysee Palace on Thursday, tasking him with forming a new government in the hope of ending weeks of political deadlock in the country that followed snap parliamentary elections.
Macron’s gamble to call the snap parliamentary election in June backfired, with his centrist coalition losing dozens of seats and no party winning an absolute majority.
The left-wing alliance New Popular Front came first, but Macron ruled out asking them to form a government after other parties said they would immediately vote it down.
Macron’s centrist faction and the far right make up the two other major groups in the National Assembly.
Barnier, a right-winger from the Republicans party (LR), has been all but invisible in French politics since failing to win his party’s nomination to challenge Macron for the presidency in 2022.
The former foreign minister and EU commissioner now faces the daunting challenge of trying to push reforms and the 2025 budget through a hung parliament at a time when France is under pressure from the European Commission and bond markets to reduce its deficit.
Speaking in the courtyard of the Matignon prime minister’s residence, Barnier said his tenure “will be about addressing, as much as we can, the challenges, the anger, the suffering, the feeling of abandonment, of injustice running through many of our cities, suburbs and rural areas.”
At 73, Barnier is the oldest prime minister in France’s modern political history, taking over from Gabriel Attal, who was the youngest.
Barnier said he would listen to all political groups, citing health care, security and jobs as well as reducing the country’s excessive debt as priorities.
“The French … expressed their need for respect, unity and appeasement,” Barnier said, standing next to Attal.
The appointment follows weeks of intense efforts by Macron and his aides to find a candidate able to build loose groupings of backers in parliament and survive possible attempts by the president’s opponents to stymie efforts to form a new government.
Macron appears to be counting on the far-right National Rally (RN) of three-time presidential candidate Marine Le Pen not to block Barnier’s appointment.
RN lawmaker Laurent Jacobelli said a condition for not voting Barnier down would be that parliament be dissolved as soon as possible – which would be early July next year.
Jordan Bardella, the president of the RN, parliament’s biggest single party, demanded the far right’s concerns be addressed. “We reserve all political means of action if this is not the case in the coming weeks,” Bardella said.
Left-wing leader Jean-Luc Melenchon said Macron naming Barnier meant the election had been “stolen from the French” and called for street protests on Saturday. Another left-wing lawmaker, Mathilde Panot, called it an “unacceptable democratic coup”.
