Macron’s Pick for PM Makes Sense for a President ‘Deeply Weakened and No Longer in Control’
© AP Photo / Sarah Meyssonnier
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French politics were brought to a boiling point in recent weeks after President Macron delayed the appointment of a new prime minister for two months after July’s snap elections – where his party suffered humiliating setbacks. This week, over 80 lawmakers signed a resolution demanding Macron’s resignation, prompting him to finally make up his mind.
Macron’s pick for the job is Michel Barnier – a veteran Gaullist statesman and Republican Party politician whose career goes back to the 1970s.
The appointment is a sign of a president “deeply weakened, nationally and internationality,” a president “no longer and control,” and in need of “an experienced 73-year-old with a long political career under his belt,” Dr. Edouard Husson, a historian and publisher of Le Courrier des Strateges – a French geopolitical affairs journal, told Sputnik.
Barnier “was elected Member of Parliament at the age of 27, in 1978. Not only did he campaign for General de Gaulle's re-election in 1965, but he also had an insider's view of the Gaullist party and was a minister under Jacques Chirac and then Nicolas Sarkozy. He also knows European institutions far better than Emmanuel Macron. All these factors mean that Michel Barnier is more independent-minded than Emmanuel Macron and his supporters. He is capable of questioning a system that he knows intimately,” Professor Husson said, pointing, for example, to Barnier’s 2022 proposal to suspend the European Union’s liberal immigration rules for France.
While France and the world shouldn’t expect any dramatic changes from Barnier, he is a “pragmatist,” according to the observer.
“On Ukraine, or Gaza, he is more likely than others to listen to the nuanced views of Pope Francis than the rest of the French political class. And unlike Emmanuel Macron, he will never overdo the aggression. In reality, I think his priority will be the budget - we need to start getting France out of debt. And to do that, it's better to have a peaceful policy,” Husson said.
On domestic policy, Barnier is the opposite of Macron – a “unifier” rather than a divider, the observer believes.
“He was able to unite 27 points of view to negotiate Brexit with Great Britain. He will bring back to French public life a consensual way of doing politics. I don't think he will be the man to turn things around. On the other hand, he could be the man of civil appeasement…He can only govern if the Rassemblement National [parliament] remains neutral towards him. Will he go further, to the point of reconciling the Right, at least through mutual respect? It's hard to predict. But the French need appeasement,” Husson summed up.
Macron’s centrist Renaissance Party suffered a crushing election setback in July after the party’s catastrophic performance in European elections a month earlier. The Renaissance-led electoral coalition led by Foreign Minister Stephane Sejourne lost 86 seats in the nation’s 577 seat parliament, securing only 180.
The centrist Gaullist Republicans lost 22 (getting 39 total), the Left New Popular Front alliance picked up 49 seats (reaching 180 total), and Marine Le Pen’s National Rally/Union of the Far-Right gained 53 (142 total). No party was able to secure a majority of 289 or more seats.
Representatives of the New Popular Front have already vowed to fight Barnier, suggesting he lacks “political legitimacy,” and characterizing his appointment as a “scandal.” Lucie Castets, the New Popular Front’s preferred candidate, accused Macron of “placing himself in cohabitation with the National Rally,” and promised to table a motion of no confidence against Barnier at the nearest opportunity.
In his first speech as prime minister, Barnier vowed that his premiership would be “about responding as much as we can to the challenges, anger, that you talked about, to the suffering, to the feeling of abandonment, the injustice that runs, far too much, through our cities, our neighborhoods and our countryside.”
President Macron has saw his approval rating plummet since his 2022 reelection, with an average of recent polling seeing him falling to below 30 percent, and some pollsters showing him slipping to below 25 percent in June.
