It is hard to understate the importance of Emmanuel Macron’s pick of Michel Barnier as his fifth prime minister.
Macron, who was elected in 2017 by sending France political old guard into early retirement, is putting his country’s future and his presidential legacy in the hands of a 73-year-old boomer from the center-right. Barnier was first elected to the Assemblée Nationale, France’s parliament, in 1978. The veteran politician served as foreign minister (2004-2005) under President Jacques Chirac and as agriculture minister (2007-2009) under Nicolas Sarkozy.
In the 2022 presidential election, Barnier hoped to win the nomination of the center-right Les Républicains (LR) by promising to increase the pension age to 65 and boost the weekly work hours. He also promised a “moratorium” on immigration and to disrespect rulings of the European Court on Human Rights in Strasburg that might contravene such a policy.
For the left, the man from the alpine Savoie region is thus a no go. And that means Prime Minister Barnier only has a chance of surviving a motion of censure in parliament if the far-right Rassemblement National (RN) abstains.
Macron, once again the disruptor unafraid to break taboos, has thus nominated the first government in France’s post-war history that will rely on the support of the far-right. Let that sink in.
Macron Ditches the Center-Left
Did Macron really have no other choice? In the end, perhaps he didn’t. But the president did little to at least try to avoid the scenario of granting RN a considerable say.
Macron could have appointed Lucie Castets, the candidate for prime minister of the left-wing alliance New Popular Front (NPF). She would have been deposed by the Assemblée within a few days. But this would have given the cover to the moderates in the NPF, such as the center-left Parti Socialiste (PS), to break ranks with Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the leader of the hard-left La France Insoumise. The PS might then have been more disposed to look for an alternative prime minister palatable for Macron’s centrist MPs and possibly the center-right LR.
Bernard Cazeneuve, a confidante of former President François Hollande, a member of the PS, could have fitted the bill. But Macron killed the idea when he realized that the moderate left would insist on delaying the implementation of his heavily contested pension reform until the 2027 presidential election and bumping up the monthly minimum wage by 10 percent to €1,600 in return for backing Cazeneuve.
True, even a Cazeneuve government might not have passed a vote of no confidence. But Macron did not even give it a shot.
Scorched Earth
That is because for Macron, the far-right RN looked the easier negotiating partner. In return for backing Barnier, they only had two substantive demands: first, lower migration (whatever that means in a country with the third lowest per capita immigration in the EU), and second, no tax rises (Macron likes that). But most crucially, RN did not make reversing Macron’s pension reform or cutting the VAT on petrol—their costly key demands in the 2024 legislative campaign—a condition for backing Barnier.
That was enough of an offer on the part of RN’s de facto-leader Marine Le Pen to make Macron jump. But Le Pen not only got a prime minster dependent on her mercy. The fact that Macron is letting RN into the antechambers of power allows Le Pen to plough on with her strategy of appearing ever more respectable, pragmatic, and thus electable for center-right voters.
And Le Pen got Macron to kill the front républicain—the agreement whereby in the second round of parliamentary and presidential elections the left, the center, and the right would vote for each other in return for the promise to keep RN out of power, no matter what.
Macron has thus betrayed this republican vow. Left-wing voters won’t forgive him that. More importantly, they won’t forgive any centrist politician who doesn’t publicly break with Macron now, and might be a candidate in the 2027 presidential election.
To avoid compromising with the left, Macron is thus leaving a scorched earth behind. Is he making a far-right take-over of Europe’s second biggest economy now more likely than ever? Yes and no.
Proportional Representation
Next to the substantive demands for backing Barnier, the RN’s procedural asks are the real game-changer. Le Pen is demanding that parliament passes a law which would introduce an electoral system based on proportional representation, and then snap elections would be held in summer 2025.
For Le Pen’s party to finally gain power, more than 50 years after it was founded by a former Waffen-SS officer and Le Pen’s father, two things must happen.
One, France’s electoral law needs to become like Italy’s, Austria’s, or the Netherland’s. RN has wanted proportional representation for decades. The fact that Le Pen is now putting this front and center suggests that she has concluded that the current electoral system makes it too hard to win a parliamentary majority on her own. Finishing “only” third, the 2024 vote was a big disappointment for RN. The party had hoped to win an absolute majority of seats.
Second, like in Rome, Vienna, or The Hague, RN must get the traditional right-wing parties to lift the taboo of working with them. The party being prepared to back Barnier is part of this strategy of tying in with the center-right.
A Hard Right or More Stable France?
Now what to think of all this? There are two conclusions that leave one disappointed and somewhat reassured for France at the same time.
On the one hand, the far-right has gotten one step closer to power with Macron’s decision to appoint a prime minster dependent on RN.
On the other hand, the risk of RN governing the EU’s second biggest member alone is receding. With a proportional electoral law, which is also supported by the left, we don’t need to have sleepless nights over French elections any more. Then, the question would be, essentially, whether RN wins 25 or 30 percent of the seats, and not whether it gets an absolute majority or not.
That at least, would be good news for Europe.
Joseph de Weck is INTERNATIONALE POLITIK QUARTERLY’s Paris columnist and author of Emmanuel Macron. The revolutionary president.
