French PM hopes to name new government by Christmas

New French Prime Minister François Bayrou on Thursday, December 19, said he hoped to name a government to lead the country out of its political quagmire at the weekend or by Christmas at the latest.

The country was plunged into fresh chaos earlier this month after the far right and left wing joined forces to eject Bayrou’s predecessor Michel Barnier from office, making his the shortest stint as prime minister in the Fifth Republic’s history.

Veteran former justice minister Bayrou’s cabinet picks will have to negotiate the divided parliament that brought down Barnier, whose time in office foundered on his minority administration’s failure to pass a state budget.

Bayrou said he hoped that his new administration would “be presented … over the weekend” and “in any case before Christmas.”

A centrist ally of President Emmanuel Macron, Bayrou is tasked with succeeding where Barnier failed. Any budget will have to shore up France’s shaky finances without triggering further censure from the far right or the leftover spending cuts and tax rises to reduce the deficit.

“I hope that we can have it around mid-February. I’m not sure we’ll get there,” he admitted to broadcaster France 2.

France has been mired in deadlock since Macron gambled on snap elections earlier this year in the hopes of bolstering his authority. Instead, voters returned a parliament fractured between three rival blocs, with his centrist movement a roughly similar size to the broad leftist alliance and the far right.

Both those camps have urged the government to reverse some of Macron’s flagship reforms, including the raising of the state pension age from 62 to 64 years old. That triggered widespread protests after it was forced through by a controversial constitutional mechanism.

‘Total deadlock’

Bayrou said he was open to reexamining the pension age question.

“But we’ll also have to ask ourselves the question of how to finance it,” he added, warning that he would not suspend the 2023 reform.

Pressed on whether he would invoke Article 49.3 – the mechanism used to force through the pension reform without a vote – Bayrou vowed not to unless there was a “total deadlock on the budget.”

Three times a presidential candidate himself in 2002, 2007 and 2012, Bayrou had a frosty relationship with right-wing ex-president Nikolas Sarkozy. But even Bayrou said he felt sympathy for his old rival, who on Wednesday became France’s first former head of state forced to wear an electronic tag after being convicted for corruption.

“I’ve fought Nicolas Sarkozy hard in my life, and when I learnt of this verdict, it made me feel sorry” for “him and his family,” Bayrou said. “I know what it’s like to stand before the machinery of the law.”

Bayrou was himself acquitted in February after a seven-year-long case over the alleged fraudulent employment of parliamentary assistants by his party. The judge ruled that he was owed the “benefit of the doubt.”

The public prosecutor’s office has appealed, with the date for the appeal trial yet to be set.