France’s former prime minister, conservative Michel Barnier, was in office for just three months. Now President Emmanuel Macron is betting that another 73-year-old political veteran, centrist François Bayrou, will prolong France’s political turmoil.
Bayrou, the mayor of the southwestern city of Pau and a former minister, was one of Macron’s early supporters and helped him win the 2017 presidential election. His 36 MPs are a key component of Mr Macron’s group in parliament and are his supporters. Lieutenants have held important cabinet positions in successive governments.
But Mr Bayrou also has an independent political identity and his own party, known as the National Party, which is separate from Mr Macron and which he hopes to use to avoid the same fate as Mr Barnier. I’m trying.
Democratic MP Philippe Vizier said Mr Bayrou’s strong personality and all-round political connections would help him garner broader support.
“He’s the original centrist,” he said. “The power of Congress will remain the same, but he will speak to everyone and benefit from the connections he has built over decades.”
France’s turmoil began in the summer when Macron convened, then lost early parliamentary elections and began a tumultuous hung parliament between Marine Le Pen’s far-right bloc and a larger left-wing bloc. Last week, the government passed a motion to censure Barnier over his unpopular deficit-cutting budget and ousted him.
Mr Macron postponed announcing his choice for prime minister from Thursday night until midday on Friday after reports that he was having second thoughts about Mr Bayrou. But the president had few viable options.
A source close to Bayrou said he was initially told in a tense meeting that lasted nearly two hours at the Elysée Palace on Friday morning that he would not be able to hold the job, but that he would maintain the support of the foreign ministry. He is said to have convinced Mr. Macron of the importance of His name was announced just hours later.
Richard Ramos, an MP in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and a long-time ally, said that if he was not nominated as prime minister, “he would be happy to free himself from an alliance with Macron because he thinks now is his time.” You can imagine that we’ll get it back.”
“Baillou is no one’s vassal. He is an ally of Mr. Macron, not a vassal.”
The Elysée Palace did not respond to requests for comment on Friday’s events.
Like his predecessor, Mr. Bayrou’s political career spans five decades. He ran for president three times, served as education minister in centre-right governments, and briefly served as justice minister under Macron in 2017.
At the time, Bayrou was preparing a series of reforms to clean up politics and party funding (one of his signature themes) when he himself was forced to resign over a funding scandal involving the MoDems. . In a subsequent trial, the party was found guilty of embezzling EU funds by using Brussels officials for national political activities. Mr. Bayrou was found not guilty at the first trial, but the prosecution is appealing the verdict.
Despite being entrenched in national politics since the 1990s, Mr. Bayrou has remained true to his regional roots, in contrast to the Parisian elite of Mr. Macron’s inner circle. The son of a farmer killed in a tractor accident, he established his political fiefdom in Pau, a city in the Béarn region at the foot of the Pyrenees. Bayrou, a devout Catholic, has six children.
He may be a proud Béarnaisian, but Bayrou is said to have the ego of a Pyrenean.
Former president Nicolas Sarkozy, whose 2007 rivalry with Bayrou sparked a bitter feud between the two, recalled meeting his centrist rival shortly after taking office. In his memoirs, Mr. Sarkozy admitted that he experienced “great difficulties with the apparently flattering ideas that I had about myself.” What I’ve always wondered is why he believed his opinion was so valuable at that stage. ”
Bairou started out as a liberal Christian Democrat allied with former President Valéry Giscard d’Estaing and served as a minister under the Gaullist government of Jacques Chirac. In 2007, he sought to occupy the political center, founding MoDem and running against Mr. Sarkozy, a decision that many French conservatives still resent.
In 2012, Bairou supported socialist François Hollande’s presidential campaign.
Bayrou’s hero is the French monarch Henry IV, whom Bayrou sees as a symbol of reconciliation between adversaries. He has written two books about the first Bourbon kings, who granted religious freedom to Protestants under the Edict of Nantes of 1598. This king is also from Po.
Bayrou said he intended to unite the French people, not divide them, adding of his appointment: “Today is the anniversary of the birth of Henry IV, and I have written many times about Henry IV, but I think reconciliation is an important thing, so this came at the right time.” ”
Erwan Varanant, also a deputy defense minister, said the new prime minister’s bridge-building instincts would serve him well.
“He has tried to get people from different backgrounds to work together. . . . He is the person who can build this necessary coalition.”
But Baillou was clear-eyed about the challenges ahead, saying in his acceptance speech on Friday: “We are very aware that the Himalayas are facing all kinds of challenges.”
Bayrou’s prospects depend first on whether he can accomplish the feat that defeated Barnier. That means passing a 2025 budget that would require unpopular tax increases and even more unpopular spending cuts for France to start reducing its deficit.
He has long preached that France should get its finances in order and made it a central issue of his 2007 campaign, even though voters disliked that message. “It’s a moral issue because the debt falls on the shoulders of our children… It’s unacceptable,” he said on Friday.
For Bairou to be successful, he will need to neutralize Le Pen’s National Party (RN) and at least seriously negotiate a truce with the moderate left, especially the Socialist Party. But if he moves too far to the left, he could alienate the right-wing Les Républiques, which has allied with centrists to support Barnier.
Since Mr Barnier’s ouster, Mr Macron has been trying to negotiate a non-aggression pact with opposition parties, excluding the far-right and far-left, and whether that pact is upheld will determine the new prime minister’s survival. The president hoped to escape RN control by persuading the socialists, communists, and Greens not to denounce the new government in exchange for concessions.
But early signs on the left were not positive. Socialist Party leader Olivier Fauré, the Green Party and key Communist figures accused Macron of once again choosing someone from his own camp.
“Our votes depend on your commitment to forge a compromise solution that changes the direction of our government,” Faure wrote in an open letter to Bayrou, highlighting his priorities as pensions, tax justice and He added that it was an environmental policy.
As for Marine Le Pen, she has had a friendly relationship with Bairou over the years. He sometimes supported RN in creating a more representative political system, and once lent her the signatures she needed to run for president.
When the RN had difficulty borrowing campaign funds from banks, Bayeux said it deserved funding like any other political party, a move that ran counter to mainstream practices that exclude the far right.
Bairou has long supported changing France’s electoral system to introduce proportional representation to encourage parties to compromise in parliament. Le Pen is also calling for such changes.
But Le Pen warned her on Friday that she would not rule out a vote on another censure motion. She wrote to X: “Politicians who simply prolong Macronism, which has been rejected twice at the ballot box, will only lead to gridlock and failure.”
