By Michelle Rose
PARIS (Reuters) – When veteran centrist François Bairou, France’s new prime minister, was education minister in the 1990s, his plan to increase subsidies for private schools sparked nationwide protests. He fell quickly and would remain in office for another four years.
Three decades on, he will face another force in the form of a fractured and fractured parliament, where one of his first tasks – as President Emmanuel Macron’s fourth prime minister of the year – will be to pass the 2025 budget.
First, he must name a government that, like his predecessor Michel Barnier, will have the support of a minority in parliament and will be immune to attacks from far-right and left-wing opponents.
The ouster of Barnier and his cabinet – the first time the French parliament has voted to remove a government since 1962 – appears to have caught even those behind the move by surprise. For now, there is cross-party support for emergency legislation to ensure the government’s funding is not cut – but then the hard work on next year’s budget will begin.
“The difficulties remain the same as under Michel Barnier,” Arnaud Benedetti, a professor at Sorbonne University, told Reuters. “In any case, a vote of no confidence is unlikely in the short term.”
A Macron aide said Bairou was “the most consensual candidate who can bring people together”. Socialists said he represented more of the same.
Debt is a “moral problem”
A career politician, Bairro, 73, was a torchbearer of centrism until Macron changed the political landscape in 2017, boosting traditional mainstream parties in a campaign that Bairro used decisively to bounce back.
Bayrou has been vocal in the past about the risks of France’s growing debt pile.
He did it again on Friday, saying the country’s debt was a “moral problem” as much as a financial one. “I understand your warning about the seriousness of the situation and I agree,” he told Barnier.
But he places great importance on keeping the peace, whether with unions, lawmakers or the many powerful interests in France.
“I love to repair,” he told La Tribune Dimanche in his first interview over the weekend.
Keeping the peace in a National Assembly dominated by three warring factions will be nearly impossible.
Lawmakers’ opposition to the 2025 budget bill led to Barnier’s downfall, and left-wing leaders say they may try to oust Bairro if he also uses special constitutional powers to pass the budget without a vote in parliament.
“Bringing in demands from opposition parties could be fiscally costly and the extent of fiscal consolidation could be limited next year,” JP Morgan’s Rafael Brun-Aguier said in a note.
That was the same conclusion that ratings agency Moody’s (NYSE: ) issued on Saturday, which downgraded France by one notch, saying the fall of the Barnier government reduced the chances of a significant improvement in France’s public finances.
Far-right budget red lines continue
Throughout the week, Macron held talks with party leaders that include the center-right Republicans and Communists.
He called on all “republican forces” to unite, but chose to resist Socialist Party calls to appoint a prime minister from among them, unwilling to risk reforms that have liberalized the eurozone’s second-largest economy and made the pension system more financially sound. support.
Still, the president’s 2023 pension reform will remain a focus of his opponents.
“Our red lines remain,” Jordani Bardella, the leader of the far-right National Rally, told reporters shortly after Bairu’s name was mentioned. These red lines include indexing pensions to inflation through 2025.
One poll this week showed that 35%-38% of voters intended to back Bardella’s boss, Marine Le Pen, in the next presidential election in 2027 – a level never seen before for a far-right leader and putting him in the lead. .
Furthermore, even if Bairu’s political opponents do not get in the way, the challenges for his next government will be enormous.
He will need to reduce the budget deficit from a projected 6.1% in 2024, while fending off protest-prone unions, increasing Ukraine’s military spending and finding ways to support an ailing industrial sector.
Barnier has pledged to reduce the deficit by raising taxes on the wealthy and big companies, as well as limiting planned increases in pension payments. But these measures failed when his government fell.
Former finance minister Bruno Le Maire, angered by MPs investigating his role in reining in France’s deficit, made a scathing accusation to parliament.
“This assembly is taxed, spent, censored,” he said. It has long lost all sense of economic and budgetary reality.