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President Emmanuel Macron has named the EU’s former Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier as France’s next prime minister in a bid to break a post-election political stalemate.
Barnier, 73, is a veteran of France’s conservative Les Républicains, a party Macron has wooed to find a candidate with a shot at commanding majority support in the National Assembly and who will not seek to undo the president’s pro-business reforms.
In a handover with his predecessor Gabriel Attal, France’s youngest prime minister when he was appointed to the job in January aged 34, Barnier promised “rupture and change”. He said he would seek to address the “suffering and sense of abandonment and injustice many people are going through”.
“We’ll need to listen a lot and show respect, between the government and parliament, and with all political forces,” Barnier said of his looming challenge to try to forge a working majority with France’s lower house, which includes a big far-right bloc.
Although Barnier comes from a rival centre-right party, Macron has chosen a premier with significant standing on the European stage, one who served as the EU’s commissioner handling financial services for four years, then later as Brussels’ negotiator with London on Brexit.
Pressure had been building on Macron to name a prime minister two months after a snap election that ended up weakening him, with his own centrist camp losing seats to the dismay of people such as Attal, who had worked with the president in various roles since 2017. On Thursday Attal thanked Macron but said he was frustrated to leave so soon.
Other forces on the right and left also fell short of an outright majority in a hung parliament.
“French politics are in an ailing state, but there is a path to healing,” Attal said, calling on leaders to drop sectarian positions.
The deadline for the start of 2025 budget discussions in parliament next month — particularly urgent given the poor state of France’s public finances — had added to the need to break the deadlock.
As president, Macron appoints the prime minister and will discuss cabinet appointments with Barnier in what is anticipated to be a major shake-up. Leading figures such as finance minister Bruno Le Maire are expected to depart.
Parliament is not required to approve Barnier’s appointment, but opposition parties can introduce no-confidence motions to topple a government, meaning the new prime minister will need cross-party support.
Macron is also now in the position of needing backing from the far-right Rassemblement National of Marine Le Pen if the Barnier government is to endure, given that his choice marks a rightward tilt that leftwing parties in France oppose.
Le Pen has cautiously welcomed the appointment, although some in her party had criticised Barnier for being a “fossilised” remnant of a pre-Macron era.
“Barnier seems at least to meet one of the criteria we’d demanded, which was to have someone who would respect different political forces and be able to speak with the Rassemblement National,” Le Pen told reporters. “That will be useful as compromises will be needed to solve the budget situation.”
During the snap election, parties including politicians from Macron’s group had worked together tactically in many constituencies to block RN candidates from winning.
A leftwing alliance won the largest number of seats but was still short of a majority. It was followed by Macron’s centrist supporters and allies, while the far-right RN came third but was the largest single political party.
Jean-Luc Mélenchon, leader of the far-left France Insoumise (France Unbowed) party, part of the victorious leftwing alliance which included Socialists and Greens, blasted Barnier’s nomination and called on supporters to join anti-Macron protests on Saturday.
“We’ve been robbed in this election,” Mélenchon said. The Socialist party said it would seek to block Barnier, although the left does not have enough seats to do so alone.
Mujtaba Rahman, analyst at Eurasia Group, said Barnier’s international profile would help in the country’s bid to reassure markets over the economy and public spending. The prime minister has also served in several French cabinet positions, including foreign minister.
“He’s a safe pair of hands known to market participants, known to Europe, and the domestic political elite within France,” Rahman said, adding that markets would watch whether Macron’s labour and pensions reforms would remain intact.
European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen congratulated Barnier and added on social media site X: “Barnier has the interests of Europe and France at heart, as his long experience demonstrates.”
The appointment comes after a frenzied week in which prime ministerial contenders came and went, and Macron dithered between options, including the Socialist former prime minister Bernard Cazeneuve.
Barnier unsuccessfully attempted to become the LR presidential candidate in France’s 2022 elections. In that campaign, Barnier took a hard line on immigration, proposing a moratorium of three to five years on non-EU arrivals to France and claiming it was “out of control”.
The position surprised some who had known him in Brussels, but could make Le Pen’s party see him more favourably.