France’s embattled President Emmanuel Macron has appointed centrist ally Francois Bayrou as prime minister, he announced on Friday, as he seeks to calm a political crisis that has left his authority dwindling by the day.
Macron’s office made the announcement a week after the former office holder Michel Barnier lost a vote of no confidence, forcing him to submit his resignation.
Bayrou ran for president three times before rallying behind Macron in 2017. The 73-year-old is the founder of the centrist Democratic Movement political party (MoDem), and mayor of the southwestern town of Pau.
He must now form a government and look to pass a budget through a sharply divided parliament, where Macron faces an avowed opposition from both the left-wing and far-right blocs.
“Everyone is aware of the difficulty of the task,” Bayrou told reporters in Paris on Friday. “I think that there is a path to be found that brings people together instead of dividing them.”
Barnier’s minority government collapsed after just three months as it attempted to pass a 2025 budget, which included €60 billion ($62.9 billion) worth of tax hikes. His effort to force the agenda through without a vote gave lawmakers the chance to oust him, and left- and right-wing forces united to bring Barnier down.
Bayrou will take on that challenge, but it is unclear whether his stint in office will prove more fruitful than his predecessor.
He must pass his own budget before December 21. If that deadline is missed, the government could still legislate a “fiscal continuity law,” which would avoid a shutdown by allowing the government to collect taxes and pay salaries, with spending capped at 2024 levels, according to the S&P Global Ratings credit rating agency.
Jordan Bardella, the president of the far-right National Rally (RN) party, told CNN affiliate BFMTV on Friday that “there will not be an automatic censure motion” against Bayrou. “Our red lines are the same (on the budget),” he added. “The ball is in François Bayrou’s court.”
Marine Le Pen, the RN figurehead who has challenged Macron in his two successful presidential runs, added her group is “asking (Bayrou) to do what his predecessor was unwilling to do: listen to the opposition to build a reasonable, well-considered budget.”
“Any other policy that would simply be an extension of Macronism, twice rejected at the ballot box, could only lead to deadlock and failure,” she said.
Barnier’s proposed financing bill, which sparked his downfall, aimed at bringing the country’s budget deficit down to five per cent next year, according to government calculations.
Some of the measures are hugely unpopular with opposition parties, such as delaying matching pension increases to inflation.
France’s ongoing political crisis was unleashed when Macron called snap parliamentary elections for July, a poll which resulted in a divided parliament that left the president’s centrist lawmakers sandwiched by powerful blocs on the left and the far-right.
Last week, Macron defied calls to step down, saying in a televised address that parliament should “do what it was elected for” and act “in the service of the French people.” (CNN)
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