The fourth government of the year was unveiled by recently-installed French Prime François Bayrou on Monday evening, in what appears to be a doubling down on neo-liberal Macronism, with previously discarded allies of the president returning to power.
Ten days after he was tapped to replace short-termed Michel Barnier as prime minister, François Bayrou announced the ministers that will form his government, yet it remains to be seen if the ‘meet the new boss, same as the old boss’ government will fair better than Barnier’s in surviving the fractured political environment in Paris.
Bayrou’s government will be led by four senior ministers of state; Élisabeth Borne, who started the year as Prime Minister before being forced out by Macron, as the new Education Minister, former Prime Minister Manuel Valls, who has been tapped as the new Minister of the Overseas, Gérald Darmanin, Macron’s former Interior Minister, who has been selected as the new Justice Minister, and Barnier government holdover Bruno Retailleau, who will retain his post at the helm of the Ministry of the Interior, Le Figaro reported.
Belying the fragility of the incoming government, politicians from the leftist New Popular Front and the populist-right National Rally — who banded together to collapse Barnier government earlier this month — have criticised the continuity Macron government.
National Rally President Jordan Bardella branded the Bayrou government as a “coalition of failure” while joking that “fortunately, ridicule doesn’t kill.”
The current frontrunner in the race to replace President Macron, Marine Le Pen said that the new government “like the previous one, relies on a clear lack of legitimacy and an unobtainable majority.”
“The executive is in place tonight, it will have to change its method, listen and hear the opposition in order to construct a budget that takes into account the choices expressed at the ballot box. While waiting for the change, we will know how to remind it that nothing can be done and decided behind the backs of eleven million French people,” the National Rally leader said.
The leader of the Socialist Party — a part of the New Popular Front bloc — Olivier Faure said: “It’s not a government, it’s a provocation.”
Meanwhile, MEP Rima Hassan, a member of the far-left France Unbowed (La France Insoumise/LFI) party — another member of the NFP bloc — called for a “revolution” and the “taking of the Élysée” Palace in response to the Bayrou government.
Former presidential candidate and LFI leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon predicted this week that the new government “will not make it through the winter,” arguing that because there is not a majority in the National Assembly for the budget, the new government will be forced to rely on the controversial constitutional loophole, Article 49.3, which allows the government to enact legislation without a vote in the parliament.
After failing to come to a compromise, former Prime Minister Michel Barnier attempted earlier this month to pass through his tax-raising budget with Article 49.3. However, this resulted in Le Pen’s National Rally deciding to join a no-confidence vote tabled by the New Popular Front. The use of the loophole previously resulted in weeks of riots across France when then-PM Borne — now the education minister — pushed through a lowering of the state pension age last year.
Prime Minister Bayrou has said that he will only use Article 49.3 “on the latter end of the budget” and will allow the National Assembly to debate other measures, claiming that he is “someone who loves parliamentary democracy”. The budget is of increasing importance, given France’s ballooning deficit and debt, now around 112 per cent of GDP, which could see the country punished by the EU and credit rating agencies.
If the government fails again to make a compromise with Le Pen, who has argued that increasing the tax burden on the country will lead to economic stagnation and therefore exacerbate the debt issues, there could be a repeat of the downfall of the Barnier government. Although President Macron has vowed to remain in office until the end of his term in 2027, another government collapse could leave the country politically paralysed given that Macron is constitutionally prohibited from calling for new legislative elections until June, likely meaning there will be growing pressure on Macron to resign.
