France is burning through prime ministers and Macron’s political gambles are going bust. The French president needs to change his tactics before it’s too late.
December 2024
On December 13, French president Emmanuel Macron named François Bayrou prime minister — his fourth in eleven months. Bayrou, a 73-year-old pro-European centrist who leads the small Democratic Movement (MoDem) party, must now form a government that will not be automatically voted down. A forty-year veteran of French politics, Bayrou has been education minister, mayor of the southwestern town of Pau, a presidential candidate, and a member of the European Parliament. Macron reportedly chose Bayrou at the last minute in a messy process characteristic of the president’s penchant for unpredictable, wildcard decisions.
Bayrou’s selection comes on the heels of Michel Barnier’s government falling to a vote of no-confidence on December 4 after just three months in power, the shortest term of any government in the history of the Fifth Republic. The vote took place after Barnier failed to garner a majority for a hard-fought budget, leading him to invoke a special procedure that would allow his government to approve the budget without a formal vote. By bypassing the National Assembly, the government immediately prompted a majority of lawmakers to initiate a vote of no-confidence.
This episode — the first time a prime minister has lost a no-confidence vote since George Pompidou in 1962 — opens a new and alarming chapter in the political crisis that has gripped France since early summer, when Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally (RN) stomped the French left and center in the EU parliamentary elections.
Macron unexpectedly dissolved the National Assembly soon after, triggering a snap election. The RN soared way ahead in the first round of voting but came out the loser after parties across the left banded together to form the New Popular Front (NFP), which won 182 seats. Macron’s center-right Ensemble coalition trailed the NFP with 168 seats. Once the new Assembly was seated, however, no single party could claim a majority and all coalition-building efforts to create one failed.
All this coincided with the Paris summer Olympics. So it was not until after the games that then–prime minister Gabriel Attal of Macron’s Renaissance party resigned and backdoor talks for a new prime minister began. It was an unprecedented outcome for French voters. Unlike many other European countries, France is unaccustomed to the arduous process of parliamentary coalition-building. (Belgium, in contrast, regularly spends more than a year without an elected government.) Yet with no clear majority, deeply divided parties, a profoundly unpopular president, and an ascendant RN, the task was always going to be difficult.
In the end, Macron appointed Barnier to replace Attal as prime minister. Known for being the EU Commission’s chief Brexit negotiator, the soft-spoken 73-year-old political veteran’s diplomatic abilities were much needed at the time of his nomination given the deep divisions within the French political landscape.
The Elysée Palace presented Barnier — with his placid demeanor, tall stature vaguely reminiscent of de Gaulle’s, and impressive European resumé — as a calm savior who would ease tensions, pass a budget, and put back the Gallic nation on track. Taking office on September 5, Barnier was expected to reassure the public amid the brouhaha.
There was just one small problem, however: Barnier belonged to a conservative party, Les Républicains (LR), that had captured fewer than 8 percent of the seats in the National Assembly — many of which were won because the left-wing candidates had dropped out to prevent the election of RN members (more than 120 candidates from NPF did so in favor of Ensemble or LR candidates). On top of this, LR has recently shifted farther to the right, especially on immigration. As a member of an ultraminority party outumbered by the left and center, Barnier’s political legitimacy was shaky from the outset.
A Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing?
Yet instead of hewing to the center, Macron and Barnier quickly began to court Le Pen and her electorate. They appointed right-wing hardliner Bruno Retailleau, also of Les Républicains, as interior minister, and he immediately launched a campaign to “restore order,” parroting the RN’s discourse: “French people want more order,” the interior minister proclaimed, “order in the streets, order at the borders.” Barnier’s government proceeded to propose a bill criminalizing undocumented immigrants and hastening deportations.
On top of the anti-immigration moves, Retailleau has taken up that bête noire of the French far right, the Muslim headscarf. France is home to the largest Muslim population in Western Europe (more than 6 million) — the majority of whom, it should be noted, are not immigrants. Veiling is already banned in public schools under France’s policy of laïcité (strict secularism) which prohibits wearing religious signs in public schools. But Retailleau is now arguing that the veil is not just a religious symbol but a way to “belittle the status of women,” and that it should also be banned at school sporting events and by parents accompanying schoolchildren on field trips.
When it came time to take up the budget in October, Le Pen took a lead role and succeeded in halting tax hikes, gaining unrivalled influence in the process. But she had a strong appetite for amendments — proposing to reduce electricity rates and opposing healthcare cuts — and it became too much for Barnier. He eventually shut her down, leading the far-right leader to back the no-confidence motion filed by the far-left party.
Le Pen is likely going to be convicted for embezzling European Parliament funds in the next few weeks. And her scorched-earth tactics of bringing France’s political system to a halt may not be that popular in any case, especially for someone who has constructed her political narrative in opposition to that of her unapologetically ultraright-activist father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, by attempting to “normalize” her party and ideology. Though more polished than the elder Le Pen’s openly antisemitic and xenophobic National Front, the RN aims to reshape France’s identity. And its willingness to bypass institutions to secure its desired reforms makes it a significant threat to France’s democratic foundations.
Macron Keeps Rolling the Dice
The French president’s big gamble of dissolving the National Assembly to clarify the political landscape did not pay off. In fact, the result of the election was inconclusive and has turned France into what increasingly appears to be an ungovernable state.
The bet on Barnier was also a bust, as pandering to the far right in parliament proved a losing strategy: The president’s right turn has made him so radioactive to the center left that opportunities for forging alliances will be limited and come only with painful concessions from the presidential camp, severely curtailing Macron’s political autonomy in the process. In short, Macron and Barnier alienated allies on the left and center while winning no favors from the right. Not only did this strategy fail to stop the RN, the party is now stronger than ever politically and ideologically.
In appointing Bayrou, Macron is nonetheless testing his odds yet again. Bayrou has no more support in the National Assembly than Barnier had. The Socialists have said they are ready to work with the new prime minister, however, as long as he does not use the special procedure to bypass parliament as Barnier did; doing so would trigger another vote of no-confidence.
But the path to success remains narrow. The president, who has two years left in his term should he decide to stay, now has an opportunity to take a new approach to safeguarding France from a fate that is befalling so many other countries in Europe, where radical-right parties are gaining more and more power. He must abandon divisive provocations — for example, pursuing unpopular austerity measures to address France’s ballooning deficit or bending to extreme positions on lightning-rod issues like immigration — and meaningfully engage with parties of the center right and center left. Only by doing so can he push the far right back to the political margins — where it belongs.
Thomas Regan-Lefebvre holds a PhD in European Politics from Queen’s University Belfast. He worked as a locally employed staff in the political section of the U.S. Embassy in Paris and later taught international relations at Trinity College, Hartford.
Copyright © 2024 National Endowment for Democracy
Image credit: Li Yang/China News Service/VCG via Getty Images
|
FURTHER READING |
||
France Rallies to Resuscitate the Republic |
Why Macron’s Big Gamble WorkedThe French president risked it all to hand the far right a stinging loss. But the celebration can’t last long. If the country is to avoid greater political chaos, voters must be encouraged to think about broader coalitions that go beyond a narrow left-right divide. |
Who Decides What Is Democratic?The “crisis” of democracy is a crisis of representation. New parties, some of which are populist in troublingly illiberal ways, are arising from this moment. The danger that they pose is not that they are antidemocratic, but that they are antiliberal. |