After days of secret talks and speculation, and two months after legislative elections which left a hung parliament and his former government in a caretaker role, Emmanuel Macron on Thursday finally announced his choice of Michel Barnier as France’s new prime minister.

Barnier, 73, who notably acted as the European Union’s chief negotiator for Brexit, is a veteran conservative, member of what is now the Républicains (LR) party, renamed several times since its Gaullist origins, and a former minister under the presidencies of Jacques Chirac and Nicolas Sarkozy.

In a statement released early Thursday afternoon, the presidential office, the Élysée Palace, said “this appointment comes after an unprecedented cycle of consultations during which, in accordance with his presidential duty, the president ensured that the prime minister and the government to come would bring together the conditions to be the most stable possible, and to have the possibility of rallying the largest [political support] possible”. It was a justification which says as much about the incongruous nature of the appointment – Barnier’s LR party garnered just 5.4% of votes cast in the second and final round of the snap legislative elections called by Macron – as it does about the absurdity of the method and proceedings to reach it.

Michel Barnier (r) and Emmanuel Macron meeting at the Élysée Palace on January 31^st 2020. © Photo Stéphane Lemouton / Pool / Sipa

The French president believes he has found the solution to an impossible equation in which he alone trapped himself, by refusing to take into account the result of the legislative elections. That would have been to appoint someone designated by the political force that arrived in first place on July 7^th, namely the Nouveau Front Populaire (NFP) leftwing alliance. After several “consultations” that were in reality intended to definitively reject the NFP’s proposal of Lucie Castets, he resumed discussions with a handful of individuals who “are distinguished by their experience of serving the state and the republic” – and, it goes without saying, essentially men.

Over the past few days, former presidents Nicolas Sarkozy and François Hollande, the Senate’s conservative leader Gérard Larcher, former socialist prime minister Bernard Cazeneuve, the conservative president of the northern Hauts-de-France region Xavier Bertrand, and a few others have all climbed the grand stairway of the Élysée to impart their visions of dealing with the political crisis to a visibly lost Macron. “The problem is that he entered into this situation without having any idea of what he wanted to do,” commented recently a minister from Macron’s outgoing centre-right government, speaking on condition of anonymity. “As a result, he’s totally floating around.”

Another figure from Macron’s camp, also speaking on condition their name is withheld, said: “He lost himself in the labyrinth of the stories he tells. He’s full of self-assurance, but in substance, he’s completely lost.”

The hypothesis of early presidential elections

The seemingly eternal prevarications above all confirmed that Macron had called the snap parliamentary elections without considering what he would do if his centre-right Renaissance party and its allies were defeated. The only alternative hypothesis that had been seriously envisaged was a victory of the far-right Rassemblement National (RN) party. But while RN won 142 seats in the 577-seat parliament, it came below the NFP leftwing alliance and the centre-right alliance Ensemble. The RN chairman Jordan Bardella, who would have been prime minister in the event of the RN arriving in first place, was no longer an option in a hung parliament largely hostile towards the far-right. Someone had to be found for the post of prime minister who would appear to represent a change from Macron’s defeated centre-right government, all the while changing nothing at heart. One person who was involved in the recent consultations with the French president over the appointment of a prime minister, and who was questioned when they came out of one of the meetings, said: “He told me that it will not be someone from his camp, nor someone who would dismantle his economic policies.” That sidelined the NFP candidate.

One of the most symbolic landmarks of Macron’s economic policies is his reform last year of the pensions system, and notably the raising of the legal age of retirement on full pension rights by two years to 64. It prompted fierce opposition from trades unions and massive demonstrations in the spring of 2023 before it was adopted into law using the controversial 49-3 decree to bypass a vote in parliament. The reform was at the heart of negotiations over who should be the new prime minister. Former socialist prime minister Bernard Cazeneuve, who was at one point tipped as one of the likely choices (among several men, naturally), lost all chances after he raised the possibility of dismantling the reform.

Even though the Left came in first place in the legislative elections, the French president has preferred a man of the Right, who has no great ambition nor interest, but who can offer him a reprieve. For that is the veritable subject that he is concerned with, and those among Macron’s enemies and beyond have understood this. The problem in fact is not so much about the prime minister, but about the president, and it is the reason why a number of political leaders are now openly raising the question of early presidential elections, which are otherwise next due in 2027. They include Macron’s first prime minister, Édouard Philippe, who served between 2017 and 2020, and who, as head of the centrist Horizons party he created, recently said he would stand in the next presidential elections and was “ready” in the event of early elections.

In contempt of the lessons of the legislative elections and the principles that were at stake, Macron has chosen a prime minister who will allow him a political “cohabitation” with the government and without any real political changeover. A prime minister who, besides, comes from the only mainstream party which refused to take part in the “front républicain” – that is, the electoral strategy agreed among parties of the Left and the Right to call on supporters to vote against the far-right and for the best-placed candidate, whether from the Right or the Left. Macron’s move is as if the “front républicain” was a gadget programmed for obsolescence, as if the presidential camp and notably its policies had not been largely rejected in the urns. As if the so-called “political truce” that followed, namely the weeks of dithering to the silent backdrop of a rejected “caretaker” government, had cleared everything away.

In ministerial corridors over recent days, a certain lassitude has evolved into anger. Those previously available to talk about the political crisis had become increasingly rare, save for those who had little to say of substance. One member of the outgoing “caretaker” government, who spoke on condition their name was withheld, commented earlier this week: “Frankly, there’s nothing to say, we’re surrounded by the insane.” The words employed to describe the French president have never been as harsh. The long period of waiting for a decision on the new government has above all revealed the weakness of his position; the manner with which he has clung on to power has created a malaise.

For not content only with dismissing, against all logic of democracy, the proposed NFP candidate for the role prime minister, the president has also chosen to bow to the RN in designating his future prime minister. The message to emerge from the legislative elections was, however, clear: a majority of voters in France turned out to prevent the far-right from gaining power. But two months later, it is RN figurehead Marine le Pen who is laying down her “conditions” for supporting a new government.

Incapable of imagining any other choreography than this continual pas de deux with the RN, Emmanuel Macron has ended up being guided by the latter. The party of Jordan Bardella and his allies have well understood that, from which springs their manifest pleasure in placing a spanner in the works, in the hope of reaching what they consider to be “the only solution”, to cite the words of their new hardright ally, former LR chairman Éric Ciotti – namely, the departure from office of Emmanuel Macron.

Ellen Salvi