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France’s new PM: Barnier gets the job, but Le Pen holds the cards

​French President Emmanuel Macron speaks with then-EU Chief Brexit Negotiator Michel Barnier in February 2019.

French President Emmanuel Macron speaks with then-EU Chief Brexit Negotiator Michel Barnier in February 2019.

Michel Euler/Pool via Reuters
Willis Sparks
By Willis SparksSeptember 05, 2024
Willis Sparks
Willis Sparks is a senior editor for GZERO Daily. He is also a Director in the Global Macro practice at Eurasia Group, where he has worked since 2005. He has made speeches on international politics on every continent except Antarctica. Willis holds degrees from Brown University, the Juilliard School, Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs, and the Institut d'Etudes Politiques in Paris. He also holds an honorary degree from the Moscow Art Theatre School. A native of Macon, Georgia, Willis has worked as a stuntman at New York's Metropolitan Opera. As a child, he declined an opportunity to spend an afternoon riding the Great American Scream Machine, a rollercoaster, with Ronald McDonald, for money. He has never regretted that decision.
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France’s President Emmanuel Macron has tapped a political veteran and experienced policymaker to take on the increasingly tough job of prime minister. Michel Barnier is best known outside France as the EU’s former chief Brexit negotiator. He’s held other senior positions in both France and the EU. Barnier, 73, will be the Fifth Republic’s oldest prime minister, and he replaces Gabriel Attal, the youngest.

Barnier’s biggest job will be to reassure Brussels and investors that he can lead France out of the political and fiscal crisis that has plagued the country for months. In particular, he’ll have to fill a big shortfall in this year’s budget and pass a deficit-cutting budget for 2025. To help with this tall task, he’ll try to form a national unity government that includes influential politicians from the center-left, Macron’s centrist bloc, and the center-right.

But, as Eurasia Group’s lead Europe expert Mujtaba Rahman warns, Barnier doesn’t begin from a position of political strength. He represents his country’s center-right, which won just 47 of the 577 deputies in the new National Assembly. “The key figure for Barnier’s survival will be the far right’s Marine Le Pen," Rahman says. Given the math, and the eagerness of the far left to push Barnier out, “Le Pen has the power to bring down the Barnier government whenever she chooses."

french governmentle penmacroneuropemarine le penfrancefrance pmmichel barnier

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