French President Emmanuel Macron on Friday named his key ally Francois Bayrou as his fourth prime minister of 2024, but the magnitude of the challenge facing the veteran centrist became immediately clear when the Socialist Party refused to join his coalition government. .
Bayrou, 73, made a sober assessment of whether he could tame a hung parliament that ousted his predecessor, Michel Barnier, just last week.
“It’s a long road, everyone knows it,” he told reporters. “I’m not the first to go a long way.”
France’s growing political unrest has raised questions about whether Macron will complete his second presidential term until 2027.
It has also raised French borrowing costs and left a power vacuum in the heart of Europe, just as Donald Trump heads to the White House and Germany prepares for new elections after the collapse of its governing coalition.
Bayrou, founder of the Democratic Movement (MoDem) party, which has been part of Macron’s ruling alliance since 2017, has run for president three times, drawing on his rural roots as mayor of the southwestern city of Pau. .
His immediate priority will be passing a special bill to extend the 2024 budget, while a tougher battle over the 2025 belt-tightening legislation looms early next year.
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Parliamentary rejection of the 2025 bill led to Barnier’s downfall and left-wing leaders announced on Friday that they could also try to overthrow Bayrou should he use special constitutional powers to pass the budget against parliament.
Bayrou’s proximity to the deeply unpopular Macron may also prove a vulnerability.
The Socialist Party, which Macron courted during his search for prime minister, accused the president of ignoring its demands for a left-wing leader in favor of a “risk-taking” Macronist.
“Therefore, we will not enter the government and will remain in the opposition,” said Boris Vallaud, leader of the Socialists’ parliamentary bloc.
The left’s reaction to Bayrou’s appointment will be a concern for Macron, as the prime minister is likely to live day to day, at the mercy of the president’s opponents, for the foreseeable future.
Macron hopes Bayrou can avoid votes of no confidence until at least July, when France can hold new parliamentary elections.
Leaders of the far-left France Insoumise party said they would seek to immediately remove Bayrou, while leaders of other left-wing parties took a more nuanced approach.
Greens leader Marine Tondelier also said she would support a vote of no confidence if the prime minister ignored her concerns about taxes and pensions.
Communist leader Fabien Roussel said his party would not attack Bayrou and would decide on a case-by-case basis whether he promises not to pass the legislation by force.
Jordan Bardella, president of the far-right National Rally (RN) party, said he would not call for an immediate vote of no confidence, while fellow RN leader Marine Le Pen said Bayrou should listen to the opposition’s budget wishes.
A real test looms over the 2025 budget
Barnier’s draft budget, which sought to save 60 billion euros ($63 billion) to calm investors increasingly concerned about France’s 6% deficit, was considered too greedy by the far right and left. The government’s inability to find a way out of the stalemate has caused French borrowing costs to rise.
XTB research director Kathleen Brooks said Bayrou’s appointment was unlikely to have a major impact on French bonds. However, he said the French stock index CAC 40 .FCHI is underperforming German stocks by a margin of three decades.
“With France still mired in political turmoil, narrowing this gap is an uphill struggle, even with a new prime minister,” he wrote.
Macron appointed Bayrou justice minister in 2017, but he resigned just weeks later amid an investigation into his party’s alleged fraudulent employment of parliamentary assistants. He was acquitted of fraud charges this year.
–Reporting by Dominique Vidalon; additional reporting by Michel Rose and Elizabeth Pineau; written by Gabriel Stargardter; edited by Richard Lough, Angus MacSwan and Ros Russell
