The all-powerful secretary general of the Elysée Palace, Alexis Kohler, appeared at 7.48pm on Saturday to outline the new government. He read out the 38 names one by one, 75 days after learning the result of an extravagant legislative election, and then left again. There were no questions, no explanations. France, that is the good news, has a government again. The bad news is that no one knows for how long.
France will have its most conservative government in 12 years, since the last one led by François Fillon under Nicolas Sarkozy. Macron is handing over to the right key portfolios for its electorate, such as the Interior, which will be headed by Bruno Retailleau, a member of Les Républiques and with a political history even more to the right than the party he currently belongs to. This is a clear nod to Marine Le Pen’s National Rally, on whom the survival of the Executive depends. Despite this gesture of rapprochement, the president of RN, Jordan Bardella, warned a minute after the announcement that this government “has no future.” Ministries that are essential to the French Republic, such as education, will also be headed by Patrick Hetzel (LR), who will now lead the right.
The mess that President Emmanuel Macron threw the country into at the end of June was enormous (surprise dissolution of the Assembly, elections, risk of the far right taking over the presidency of the Government…) and has ended up creating an unprecedented scenario: the left won, but the Council of Ministers will lean to the right. After weeks of negotiations, a successful Olympic Games and the appointment of a 73-year-old prime minister, such as Michel Barnier, a conservative and at the antipodes of the radical renewal promoted by Macronism upon its arrival in the institutions in 2017, almost everything changes, except the dominant voice of the Executive: that of Macron himself. The presence of the president, however, will be more diluted and seriously conditioned by the will of Le Pen and her 126 deputies and 11 million votes.
The balance that the President of the Republic sought in the new Executive will obviously favor his party.. Macronism, which will also appoint the spokesperson for the Government, which will be made up of 38 ministers with an equal division between genders. Only 17 of these ministers will be full ministers. Seven portfolios will be for the majority support force, that is, Macron’s party. The Republicans (LR), the classic French right, post-Gaullist The aging and aging party, from which Barnier himself comes, will have three portfolios, and MoDem, a centre-right party founded by former minister François Bayrou, will get two more (including the foreign minister). The list will be joined by a minister from the Horizons party of former prime minister Édouard Philippe, another from the centrist UDI party and two other posts to be shared between a minister from the right and another from the left.
The new council of ministers will be made up of discreet profiles, without big names or party leaders, more focused on the 2027 battle for the presidential elections. But two proposals caused irritation among the president’s coreligionists: the head of the Interior and the head of the Family: two clear winks to the most conservative and radical wing of the right. Barnier, an old gambler hardened in the Brexit negotiations, used a bluff to keep the piece that mattered most to him.
Toughness on immigration and security
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The new prime minister has promised to be tough on security and immigration. He will now demonstrate this by appointing Bruno Retailleau as head of the Interior Ministry. Retailleau’s messages in recent months leave no doubt about his rigidity on the issue, and he hinted that he would seek a reform of the law that currently regulates immigration in France.
In this vein, he also initially proposed Laurence Garnier, a member of his party known for her opposition to same-sex marriage and to enshrining the right to abortion in the Constitution (not even Marine Le Pen opposed this historic initiative), as head of the Family Ministry. During the hours that her name was being circulated, the social-democratic wing of Macron’s party threatened to walk out if she delayed her appointment. Finally, Garnier will be Secretary of State. The Republicans will also keep two ministries that are particularly sensitive at the moment: Agriculture, which will be held by Annie Genevard, and Overseas, which will be managed by François-Noël Buffet in the midst of unrest in Martinique and New Caledonia.
Short life expectancy
The composition of the government has also been marked by its short life expectancy. Some of the profiles sounded out to form part of it, aware that they could soon be burned at the stake in a vote of no confidence, preferred to reject the possibility of being part of it. Also a large number of names who are already thinking about the presidential elections of 2027 and did not want to burn their chances in an express Executive. At the head of the Ministry of Economy, which will be divided to also make way for the Public Expenditure portfolio, will be Antoine Armand, 33 years old and a member of Macron’s party. The head of State also reserved – due to the powers granted to him by the Constitution – the appointment of the ministers of Defence and Foreign Affairs, where Sébastien Lecornu and Jean-Noël Barrot (MoDem) will be appointed respectively. In addition to Lecornu, there are other names that repeat, such as the Minister of Culture and former minister of Nicolas Sarkozy, Rachida Dati.
The New Popular Front, the large left-wing bloc that won the elections with 193 deputies, has refused to participate in the executive because its proposed candidate was not accepted. The same is true of the RN, although for different reasons. And there are 126 other deputies. The decision to appoint Michel Barnier (LR) as prime minister, whose party was not even part of the so-called Republican Front – the alliance in the second round of the elections between the centre and the left to stop the far right – was the only possible way out. This is the line that the Elysée defends, recalling the result of those elections. It also refers to the refusal of the left to accept former prime minister Bernard Cazeneuve, a former member of the Socialist Party.
The composition of the new government is, in any case, a kind of flight forward in order not to hand over the keys to Matignon (the seat of the prime minister’s office) to the left, which, having won the last election, had proposed Lucie Castets as prime minister. In this context, many of the Macronists inclined to social democracy have felt uncomfortable. For example, the Loire-Atlantique MP Sophie Errante, one of the first socialists to join Emmanuel Macron in 2017, announced on Friday her departure from the Ensemble pour la République (EPR) group, which brings together Renaissance MPs. “The appointment of Michel Barnier and the composition of the government mark a clear shift to the right,” she laments in a statement, in which she notes “a profound break with the reasons why I committed myself to Emmanuel Macron in 2017.” “It is the only country in the world where those who lost the elections will govern,” declared Jean-Luc Mélenchon, leader of La France Insoumise (LFI) at one of the demonstrations that took place in the streets of France on Saturday.
The first Council of Ministers of the new executive will be held on Monday. But it will be in the National Assembly and on the street where its leaders will be able to see how much time they will have to deal with the urgent needs of a country with several open crises.
