FLASH
Shkruar nga Gavin Mortimer
Barnier's failure was that he did not communicate enough with Ms Le Pen, leading her party to join the left-wing coalition last week in a no-confidence vote against his government. But contrary to media speculation, Le Pen's decision to oust Barnier has not damaged her popularity.
Emmanuel Macron has appointed veteran centrist Francois Bayrou as his fourth prime minister. First elected as an MP in 1986, Bayrou held the post of Minister of Education in the 1990s, both under the Socialist government of President Francois Mitterrand and the centre-right Jacques Chirac.
In 2007 he founded a centrist party, Mouvement Démocrate (Democratic Movement), which supported Macron in the 2017 presidential election. Although at the beginning of the campaign, Bayrou described Macron as the candidate of "the rich".
The 73-year-old Bayrou was announced at midday on Friday, after a "tense" meeting earlier in the morning with Macron at the Elysee. Whatever was said between the two men seemed to end Bayrou's chance of becoming prime minister. But according to reports, the president changed his mind after Bayou left Elize and reopened negotiations.
Bayrou replaces Michel Barnier in this job, with whom he has a lot in common. Not only are they men of the same generation, but they share a similar centrist outlook, and are open-minded about collaborating with Marine Le Pen's National Rally.
Barnier's failure was that he did not communicate enough with Ms Le Pen, leading her party to join the left-wing coalition last week in a no-confidence vote against his government. But contrary to media speculation, Le Pen's decision to oust Barnier has not damaged her popularity.
On the contrary, a poll this week in Le Figaro puts him first in the 2027 presidential campaign. Macron's popularity, on the other hand, continues to decline, and is now just 21 percent, the lowest level since he took office. in 2017. On Tuesday he promised that the new prime minister would be appointed on Thursday at the latest.
But Thursday came and went, and at the end of the day Elize declared that the name would be learned on Friday morning. It was finally discovered just before 1 o'clock in the afternoon. However, there is a sense that Macron extended this moment himself, to remind the French who is boss.
" He likes to stay in the center of the game as long as possible ", said Boris Vallaud, head of the parliamentary group of the Socialist Party. Speaking before the appointment of Bayrou, Vallaud advised the president not to do so, because " it would risk worsening the political and institutional crisis, created by himself" .
Meanwhile, speaking after Bayrou's appointment, Mathilde Panot from the left-wing party La France Insoumise said her party would present a motion of no confidence in the new prime minister as soon as possible. Even Le Pen reacted immediately to the appointment of Bayrou.
" Given the acute need to protect the interests of the French, we are asking him to do what his predecessors were unwilling to do: to listen to the opposition, to draw up a budget that is reasonable and satisfactory to all " , she wrote in a post on social networks.
"Any other policy would simply be an extension of Macronism, rejected 2 times at the ballot box, and this can only lead to new deadlocks and failures," she underlined. Three months ago, Barnier posed on the steps of Matignon, the prime minister's official residence, alongside his predecessor Gabriel Attal.
Today Barnier has taken the place of Attal, passing the baton to the next man, who is so brave that he accepted the most unenviable job in France today. How long will the Bayrou government resist? In all likelihood not for long.
He already has the left against him, while Le Pen is also moving in the background, ready to attack him, if he realizes that Bayrou is the last puppet in the hands of the president. First, Bayrou must form a new government cabinet, and then he must try to approve the budget for next year as soon as possible.
But time is not on his side. On Friday morning, the governor of the Bank of France, François Villeroy de Galhau, gave a television interview where he spoke in somber tones. He described the bad economic situation that the political crisis is causing the country.
" There is a danger that France will gradually sink. So France, which was one of the leading countries in Europe, is slipping towards the bottom of the ranking in the bloc" - he emphasized.
He asked the new prime minister not to abandon the goal of returning the budget deficit to the level of 3 percent of GDP by 2029 (currently it is 6.2 percent). De Galhau also underlined that the 2025 budget should take an "important step" towards the re-balancing of public expenditures. Good luck Mr. Bayrou!/ Adapted "Pamphlet" from "The Spectator"
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