Prime Minister Michel Barnier announced President Emmanuel Macron’s new government in France, which will represent a continuity establishment cabinet after months of deadlock and effectively shutting out both leftists and populists from the halls of power.
Over two months after snap legislative elections that left the National Assembly in a three-way power struggle, with no faction securing enough votes to form a majority on their own, newly-installed Prime Minister Barnier unveiled a Macronist-dominated government on Saturday evening.
Despite his faction winning fewer votes than the leftist New Popular Front (NFP) coalition and the populist National Rally (RN) party of Marine Le Pen, Macron partisans secured the most top positions in the new Barnier government, with top allies of the president, Antoine Armand and Laurent Saint-Martin, being installed as the new Economic and Budget ministers, respectively, Le Figaro reports.
The influential post at the Quai d’Orsay, minister of European and Foreign Affairs, will be staffed by Macron loyalist and EU princeling Jean-Noël Barrot, replacing Stéphane Séjourné, who has been tapped to become Brussels’ next censorship czar.
Meanwhile, fellow Macronist and Ukraine War-hardliner Sébastien Lecornu will represent one of the few holdovers, having been tapped to remain in his position as Defence Minister.
Barnier did manage to snag one of the top posts, however, with Senate Les Républicains (LR) leader Bruno Retailleau set to be installed in the Hôtel de Beauvau as France’s next Interior Minister, the cabinet post tasked with managing immigration.
While Retailleau is seen as more of a hawk on migration than his predecessor Gérald Darmanin and therefore his selection was apparently intended as red meat towards the populist right, the senator has also been at odds with the National Rally, having sensationally joined an attempted coup of now-disputed LR leader Eric Ciotti for backing an alliance with the Le Pen party during the legislative elections.
The unveiling of the Macronist-dominated government was resoundingly criticised by the leadership of the National Rally, which after dominating in the Spring’s European elections was on course for victory locally in France, but was blocked from winning after Macron made a last-minute strategic voting pact with the leftist New Popular Front to keep the populists from gaining power.
“The French, who twice expressed during the last elections their desire to break with seven years of renunciations and failures of Macronism, find themselves this evening with a reshuffled government, far removed from the desire for change and alternation expressed last June,” Le Pen said on Saturday.
“This transitional government is the consequence of the quagmire created by unnatural alliances formed during the legislative elections. The great alternation that we are calling for, we will continue to prepare it to allow France to recover,” the former presidential candidate added.
Le Pen’s deputy, rising populist star Jordan Bardella added that the new government “in no way reflects the aspirations of the French,” but predicted “obsolete political schemes” and the Macron government as a whole is coming to the “end of its reign”.
There will also likely be no political honeymoon period for former EU Brexit negotiator Barnier, whose incoming government — which took a record 67 days to be announced — will immediately be plunged into a budget fight as the country attempts to deal with its looming debt crisis.
Meanwhile, the far-left La France Insoumise party of radical socialist Jean-Luc Mélenchon has launched impeachment proceedings against President Macron for selecting Barnier as prime minister rather than the preferred candidate of the New Popular Front.