Meet Eric Lombard, the banker tasked with saving the French economy – POLITICO #FrenchFinance

Indeed, despite spending most of his career in the private sector, Lombard’s brush with public service comes as an adviser to former socialist Finance Minister Michel Sapin.

Thanks to the role, however, Lombard will have gained experience of French administration and in particular the French Economy Ministry, known in France as “Bercy.”

French President Emmanuel Macron appointed Bayrou as French prime minister this month, after the National Rally and the New Popular Front coalition joined forces to topple Michel Barnier’s government.

As a result, Barnier’s budget for 2025 was also rejected, leaving France without the relevant law just a few days before an end-of-year deadline. Bayrou now hopes that France will pass a new budget by mid-February.

In the meantime, the outgoing government has passed a stopgap budget, which effectively carries over the 2024 budget to 2025 to prevent a U.S.-style shutdown in January. But the stopgap does nothing to reduce France’s deficit, which reached 6.2 percent of the country’s GDP this year, twice the level permitted by EU rules. France is already under an excessive deficit procedure in Brussels for breaching limits in 2023.

So far, there are no indications that Bayrou’s government can succeed where Barnier has failed. Bayrou can only count on the same fragile parliamentary coalition built by Barnier — which includes Macron’s centrists and the right-wing Republicans — as he has failed to get the support of France’s socialists.