French President Emmanuel Macron on Friday named centrist Francois Bayrou as prime minister, handing him the daunting task of hauling France out of months of political crisis.
The 73-year-old head of the Democratic Movement, which is allied to Macron’s party, was appointed nine days after parliament ousted former French prime minister Michel Barnier’s government in a historic no-confidence vote following a standoff over an austerity budget.
“The president of the Republic has appointed Mr Francois Bayrou as prime minister and tasked him with forming a government,” the presidency said.
Photo: EPA-EFE
The announcement capped hours of drama that saw Bayrou summoned to a morning meeting at the Elysee Palace — where he was reportedly told Macron would choose another figure — only for the presidency to finally announce he had the post.
Bayrou is the sixth prime minister of Macron’s mandate, with his predecessor Barnier France’s shortest-serving prime minister, having lasted only three months.
He is also Macron’s fourth prime minister of this year.
The newly appointed prime minister faces the immediate challenge of forming a Cabinet that can survive a no-confidence vote in a divided parliament.
At the traditional handover ceremony with Barnier, Bayrou said: “No one knows better than me the difficulty of the situation,” with France facing a ballooning budget deficit coupled with political instability.
Several sources said that the morning meeting between Macron and Bayrou had been a stormy affair, with the president initially leaning toward naming his loyal French Minister of the Armed Forces Sebastien Lecornu as prime minister.
Bayrou threatened to break the alliance with Macron, who decided it would be best to plump for Bayrou in the name of unity, the sources said.
Macron “did not have the choice,” a source said.
Mujtaba Rahman, Europe director at risk analysis firm Eurasia Group, said: “In the long history of the Fifth Republic [founded in 1958], this may have been the first time that a prime minister chose himself.”
The political instability prompted Moody’s to downgrade France’s credit rating yesterday to “Aa3,” with a stable outlook.
“France’s public finances will be substantially weakened by the country’s political fragmentation,” the ratings agency said.
Bayrou would be tasked with holding dialogue with all political forces except the far-right National Rally (RN) and hard-left France Unbowed (LFI) parties “to find conditions for stability and action,” a member of Macron’s team said on Friday.
Macron has been confronted with a complex political equation since snap parliamentary elections in July: how to secure a government against a no-confidence vote in a bitterly divided lower house where no party or alliance has a majority.
FN leader Marine Le Pen, who teamed with the left to topple the Barnier government, said her party would not automatically do likewise to Bayrou, but did not rule out exploiting such a “lever.”
“I’m not threatening no-confidence motions morning, noon and night. I’m just saying that I’m not giving up on this tool,” she said.
The LFI said it would table such a motion.
Socialists quickly posed conditions for not supporting a no-confidence motion in an open letter to Bayrou.
He must agree not to ram laws through without a vote and rely on support from the far right, the party said, adding that they would not accept ministerial posts.
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