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07-09-2024
PARIS: Veteran French conservative Michel Barnier has taken over as prime minister, almost two months after France’s snap elections ended in political stalemate.
He said France had come to a “serious moment” and he was facing it with humility: “All political forces will have to be respected and listened to, and I mean all.”
President Emmanuel Macron named the EU’s former chief Brexit negotiator, ending weeks of talks with political parties and potential candidates.
Barnier, 73, arrived at the prime minister’s residence at Hotel Matignon in Paris on Thursday evening, taking over the role from Gabriel Attal, France’s youngest ever prime minister who has been in office for the past eight months.
His immediate task will be to form a government that can survive a National Assembly divided into three big political blocs, with none able to form a clear majority but Barnier will need all his political skills to navigate the coming weeks, with the centre-left Socialists already planning to challenge his appointment with a vote of confidence.
He said he would respond in the coming days to the “challenges, the anger and the sense of being abandoned and of injustice that run through our towns and countryside”.
He promised to tell the truth to the French people about the financial and environmental challenges facing the country, and to work with “all those in good faith” towards great respect and unity.
It has taken President Macron 60 days to make up his mind on choosing a prime minister, having called a “political truce” during the Paris Olympics.
In his farewell speech outside Hotel Matignon, Gabriel Attal said “French politics is sick, but a cure is possible, provided that we all agree to move away from sectarianism”.
Having led the marathon talks on the UK’s exit from the European Union between 2016 and 2019, Barnier has considerable experience of political deadlock. He has had a long political career in France as well as the EU and has long been part of the right-wing Republicans (LR) party.
Known in France as Monsieur Brexit, he is France’s oldest prime minister since the Fifth Republic came into being in 1958.
Three years ago, he tried and failed to become his party’s candidate to take on President Macron for the French presidency. He said he wanted to limit and take control of immigration.
Macron’s presidency lasts until 2027. Normally the government comes from the president’s party, as they are elected weeks apart but the man who has called himself “the master of the clocks” changed that when he called snap elections in June and his centrists came second to the left-wing New Popular Front.
President Macron has interviewed several potential candidates for the role of prime minister, but his task was complicated by the need to come up with a name who could survive a so-called censure vote on their first appearance in the National Assembly.
The Elysee Palace said that by appointing Barnier, the president had ensured that the prime minister and future government would offer the greatest possible stability and the broadest possible unity.
Barnier had been given the task of forming a unifying government “in the service of the country and the French people”, the presidency stressed.
Barnier’s initial challenge as prime minister will be to steer through France’s 2025 budget and he has until 1 October to submit a draft plan to the National Assembly. (Int’l Monitoring Desk)
