Physical Address
304 North Cardinal St.
Dorchester Center, MA 02124
FREJUS, FRANCE – 03/05/2023: Mayor of Pau François Bayrou is seen during the funeral of François Léotard. The French politician and former Minister of Defense and Culture François Léotard died on April 25 at the age of 81. His funeral takes place in Frejus. (Photo by Laurent Coust/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)
Soup Images | light rocket | Getty Images
French President Emmanuel Macron named Francois Bayrou as the new prime minister on Friday as political uncertainty is expected to continue to weigh on the country’s administration following the fall of Michel Barnier’s government last week.
The centrist Bayrou is the country’s fourth prime minister this year after Barnier resigned on December 5 in the wake of a historic no-confidence vote, which saw an unlikely alliance between left-wing and far-right opposition parties.
The 73-year-old veteran politician has led France’s center-right Democratic Movement since he founded it in 2007 and is a longtime Macron ally. He is now expected to form a new government in the coming weeks.
Speaking shortly after his appointment, Bayrou warned of “a long way to go” to overcome France’s political impasse, but added that he was determined to achieve unity.
“Everyone understands the difficulty of the task. Everyone is telling themselves that there is a way to find that brings people together instead of dividing them,” he told reporters, according to Reuters.
“I think reconciliation is necessary,” he added, according to a Google translation.
Macron was expected to announce a successor a day after Barnier’s departure, but in a sign of the country’s political deadlock, that decision was delayed until this week. The president also breached a self-imposed 48-hour deadline he gave at a meeting of party leaders on Tuesday.
The delay reflects wider turmoil than his dogged French policy in recent months, with inconclusive legislative elections this summer and wider divisions over France’s sizable deficit.
Macron called snap elections in June and July in an attempt to strengthen the power base of his centrist alliance in the National Assemblybut instead emerged with a greatly reduced power base.
Last week’s no-confidence vote, held after weeks of wrangling over 2025 budget plans to raise taxes and cut public spending, saw the leftist New Front Popular (NFP) alliance and the far-right right National Rally (RN) of Marine Le Pen supported a motion against Barnier’s government. It was the first time a French government has been dismissed since 1962.
Barnier had held the post for just three months, succeeding Gabriel Attal, who in January became France’s youngest prime minister in modern history, and Elisabeth Borne before him.
The new prime minister will now face many of the same pressures as his predecessor, with left and right expected to harass the new government for their own agendas for Budget 2025.
Le Pen, a publication in X, he urged Bayrou to listen to the opposition to build a “reasonable and thoughtful budget,” according to a Google translation. National rally leader Jordan Bardella said the “red lines” of party politics remain, in comments reported by Reuters.
Communist Party leader Fabien Roussel continued social networks that Bayrou’s appointment was a “bad idea” and questioned whether the incoming prime minister would continue pushing a policy “that has failed and been punished,” according to a Google translation.
The National Rally, for its part, wants concessions to increase pensions, discard the planned cuts in the reimbursement of medicines and reduce contributions to the budget of the European Union. The New Popular Front, for its part, wants to raise public spending and raise taxes on super-profits and the rich.
As it stands, analysts think France’s main political blocs are likely to agree on an interim budget, which will simply extend the 2024 budget into next year. This will prevent any new year government “shutdown” where France can no longer meet its financial obligations.
Such a move, however, would delay the urgent need to address France’s fiscal problems, as the budget deficit is forecast to reach 6.1% of GDP by 2024, and is expected to rise further if no action is taken to curb spending.
Investors are currently looking cautiously at France, with the performance of the benchmark 10-year French public bond rising 5 basis points to around 3.01% after the announcement, slightly higher than before the session. The French CAC 40on the other hand, it fell slightly to 0.12%.
— CNBC’s Holly Ellyatt contributed to this report.
