PARIS: French President Emmanuel Macron on Friday named François Bayrou as his fourth prime minister of 2024, tasking the veteran centrist with leading the country out of its second major political crisis in the past six months.
The priority for Bayrou, a close ally of Macron, will be to adopt a special law to renew the 2024 budget, with a tougher battle over the 2025 legislation looming early next year. Parliamentary opposition to Bill 2025 led to the fall of the government of former Prime Minister Michel Barnier.
Bayrou will likely face the same existential difficulties as former Prime Minister Barnier in drafting a special law to renew the 2024 budget
PARIS: French President Emmanuel Macron on Friday named François Bayrou as his fourth prime minister of 2024, tasking the veteran centrist with leading the country out of its second major political crisis in the past six months.
The priority for Bayrou, a close ally of Macron, will be to adopt a special law to renew the 2024 budget, with a tougher battle over the 2025 legislation looming early next year. Parliamentary opposition to Bill 2025 led to the fall of the government of former Prime Minister Michel Barnier.
Bayrou, 73, is expected to present his list of ministers in the coming days, but will likely face the same existential difficulties as Barnier in getting the legislation through a hung parliament made up of three warring blocs. His proximity to the deeply unpopular Macron will also prove vulnerable.
Jordan Bardella, president of the far-right National Rally party, said his party would not call for an immediate motion of no confidence against Bayrou.
The simmering political malaise in France has raised doubts about Macron’s ability to complete his second presidential term, which ends in 2027. It has also driven up French borrowing costs and left a power vacuum at the heart of the Europe, just as Donald Trump is preparing to return to the United States. Home.
Macron spent the days after Barnier’s ouster speaking to leaders, from conservatives to communists, seeking to secure support for Bayrou. Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally and far-left France Insoumise party were excluded.
Any involvement of the Socialist Party in a coalition could cost Macron dearly in next year’s budget.
“We will now see how many billions the support of the Socialist Party will cost,” a government adviser said on Friday.
No legislative elections before the elections
Macron hopes Bayrou can avoid votes of no confidence at least until July, when France can hold new legislative elections, but his own future as president will inevitably be called into question if the government falls again.
Bayrou, founder of the Democratic Movement (MoDem) party which has been part of Macron’s ruling alliance since 2017, has himself run for president three times, drawing on his rural roots as mayor of long-standing in the city of Pau, in the southwest of the country.
Macron appointed Bayrou as justice minister in 2017, but he resigned a few weeks later amid an investigation into his party’s alleged fraudulent employment of parliamentary aides. He was cleared of fraud charges this year.
Bayrou’s first real test will come early in the new year, when lawmakers must pass a tightening budget bill for 2025.
However, the fragmented nature of the National Assembly, rendered almost ungovernable after Macron’s snap elections in June, means Bayrou will likely live hand to mouth, at the mercy of the president’s opponents, for the foreseeable future.
Barnier’s finance bill, which targeted 60 billion euros in savings to appease investors increasingly concerned about France’s 6% deficit, was deemed too miserly by the far right and left, and the government’s inability to find a way out of the impasse has seen French borrowing costs rise further.
