The new French Prime Minister will take his time

France’s former prime minister, conservative Michel Barnier, was in office for just three months. Now President Emmanuel Macron is betting on another veteran, 73-year-old politician François Bayrou, to steer France’s political turmoil for a long time.

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. lieutenants have held senior positions in successive governments.

But Bayrou also has an independent identity and his party known as MoDem – different from Macron – which he wants to capitalize on to avoid the same situation. the future as Barnier.

Philippe Vigier, a member of the MoDem parliament, said Bayrou’s power and political connections across the board helped him gain more support.

“He’s the first centrist,” he said. “The power in parliament will be the same, but they will talk to everyone and benefit from the connections that have been made over the years.”

The unrest in France began in the summer when Macron called and lost early elections, which resulted in a parliament with a far-right candidate led by Marine Le Pen and a large left-wing coalition. Last week they fired Barniergiving criticism for his budget deficit reduction.

Macron delayed announcing his choice for prime minister from Thursday evening until Friday afternoon, amid reports that Bayrou was having second thoughts. But the president had few options.

According to people close to Bayrou, he was told that he would not get the job during a difficult meeting that lasted almost two hours at the Élysée Palace on Friday morning, but he assured Macron of the importance of keeping MoDem’s support. His name was announced a few hours later.

“He thinks this is his time, so you can imagine that he would be willing to withdraw his rights” to a deal with Macron if he is not named prime minister, said Richard Ramos, a MoDem MP and longtime ally.

“Bayrou is not the ruler of anyone; he is Macron’s friend, not his relative. “

The Elysée did not return requests for comment on Friday’s events.

As established, Bayrou’s political career spans fifty years. He served three terms as president, became minister of education in centre-right governments, and then minister of justice under Macron in 2017.

Bayrou was then planning reforms to end politics and party funding – one of his signature themes – when he was forced to resign over a financial crisis involving the MoDems. In a subsequent court case, the party was found guilty of embezzling EU funds by using Brussels operatives for political purposes. Bayrou was found not guilty in the first trial, but prosecutors are appealing the verdict.

Although he has been in politics since the 1990s, Bayrou has remained true to his constituency, unlike the Parisian electorate within Macron. The son of a farmer who died in a tractor accident, he built a political center in Pau, a city in the Béarn region at the foot of the Pyrenees. A staunch Catholic, Bayrou has six children.

He may be a proud Béarnais, but Bayrou has also been described as having a Pyrenean ego.

Former President Nicolas Sarkozy, whom Bayrou ran against in 2007 – leading to a rift between the two men – recalled meeting his arch-rival shortly after taking office. Writing in his memoirs, Sarkozy admitted to “having a real problem with the vivid idea he had of himself. I always wonder what made him believe that his opinion was so important.”

Bayrou started out as a Christian Democratic leader allied with former President Valéry Giscard d’Estaing and became a minister under Gaullist Jacques Chirac. He began to take a political position in 2007 when he founded MoDem and fought against Sarkozy, a decision that many French people are against.

In 2012, Bayrou supported the campaign of Socialist President François Hollande.

Bayrou’s hero is the French king Henri IV, whom he sees as a symbol of reconciliation between bitter enemies. He has written two books about the first Bourbon kings, who granted religious freedom to Protestants under the 1598 Edict of Nantes – and who came from Pau.

Saying that he would try to unite the French people instead of dividing the French people, Bayrou added about his election: “And it has come at the right time because today is the anniversary of the birth of Henri IV, about whom I have written a lot, because I think that reunification it is appropriate. necessary.”

Erwan Balanant, another MoDem deputy, said the new Prime Minister’s proposal to build a bridge would help him.

He has tried to get people from different areas to work together. . . He is the one who can make this important agreement,” he added.

But Bayrou was keen on the challenges he faced, saying in a speech on Friday that he was “well aware of the Himalayas that lie ahead of us in all kinds of challenges”.

Bayrou’s hopes will depend first on whether he can pull off what defeated Barnier: passing the 2025 budget that is needed to include unacceptable tax increases and unpopular spending cuts, if France starts reducing its deficit.

He has long preached that France needs to fix its finances, and he made the issue a major issue in 2007 despite voters not liking the message. “Debt is a moral problem, since putting it on the shoulders of our children . . . it is unacceptable,” he said on Friday.

For Bayrou to succeed, he will need to disrupt Le Pen’s Rassemblement National (RN) and negotiate a difficult alliance with the left, especially the Socialist Party. However, if he leans too far to the left, he will alienate Les Republicans, who have agreed with the center to support Barnier.

Following the fall of Barnier, Macron tried to negotiate non-violence pact with the oppositionapart from the extreme right and left, and the survival of his new Prime Minister will depend on whether it holds. The President hoped to escape from the hands of the RN by forcing the socialists, communists and Greens not to criticize the new government in exchange for concessions.

But the early signs from the left were not good. Socialist leader Olivier Faure, as well as key figures in the Greens and Communists, accused Macron of choosing another candidate from his camp.

“Our votes will depend on the promises you make to build a coalition to reform the government,” Faure wrote in an open letter to Bayrou, adding that his priorities will be pensions, tax justice and green policies.

As for Marine Le Pen, she has had a good relationship with Bayrou over the years. Sometimes he helped RN to establish a representative political system, even lending him the necessary signatures to run for President.

When the RN struggled to borrow money from banks to fund its campaign, Bayou said it should be paid like any other party – a move that goes against the trend of far-right removals.

Bayrou has been instrumental in reforming France’s electoral system for proportional representation with the aim of getting parties to unite in parliament. Le Pen has also called for such a change.

However, Le Pen informed her on Friday, saying that she has not decided to vote for another threat. He wrote on X: “Any politician who only prolongs Macronism, which has been rejected twice at the ballot box, is likely to cause controversy and failure.”