New French prime minister’s cunning survival strategy

Storm clouds have hovered over French politics for some time now but it was in the summer of last year that the thunder really began to roll.

In July, early parliamentary elections resulted in an unclear outcome because no single party won a clear majority. Three large political blocs eventually entered parliament in Paris, and the new government, appointed by French President Emmanuel Macron, was forced to govern without a majority to call its own.

This is how, in December, a vote of no confidence after motions were tabled by opposition parties on the left and far right, brought down Prime Minister Michel Barnier after he pushed through budget measures without parliamentary approval. Now his successor, Francois Bayrou, has inherited the difficult task of governing over a divided society and fragmented political landscape. Bayrou is head of the centrist Democratic Movement, known as MoDem, which is an important part of Macron’s centrist alliance.

Still, Bayrou took that in his stride during his inauguration speech to French parliament on Tuesday afternoon. “84% of French people think that the government won’t make it through the year,” he said with a smile. “I sometimes even wonder where the other 16% get their optimism from.”

Bayrou continued his speech by saying that the current, difficult political situation should be seen as an opportunity. “When everything seems to be so bad, the only recourse is courage,” he argued. His speech touched on a wide variety of other topics, including hospitals in France, the country’s high national debt, immigration, political party finances, agriculture and the majority voting system.

Controversial pension reform

The major focus though, was on another item — France’s controversial pension reform, which is supposed to gradually increase the age of retirement from 62 to 64. Bayrou says he’ll put the reform up for debate again and in doing this, he appears to be trying to win over the center-left Socialist Party, or PS.

Bayrou proposed that France’s respected auditing court conduct a financial analysis of the current position of French pension funds, after which trade unions and employer associations would be given three months to work out a new pension reform proposal “behind closed doors.”

All options should be on the table, Bayrou said, but the new “conclave” in charge of exploring pension reform would have to present a proposal that was financially balanced.

The PS had previously made stopping the pension reform one of the conditions for its support in parliament.

Prime Minister Bayrou is going a different route than his predecessor, the ill-fated Barnier, who reached out to the far right opposition in Parliament and made a lot of concessions to the National Rally, or RN, headed by Marine Le Pen.

This didn’t really help him in the end, as in the December no-confidence vote, the RN voted against Barnier and helped to bring down his government.

The PS only has around 60 sitting members of parliament while the National Rally has just over double that many. But combined with votes from the centrist parties, the PS seats would be enough to prevent future no-confidence votes from succeeding.

Socialists not convinced

Still, at the moment, Bayrou’s offer is too vague for the PS. Party leader Olivier Faure told French broadcaster TF1 that the PS would withdraw its support if it did not receive “a clear answer” to its questions. “I demand that the prime minister state very clearly whether there is an agreement or not” to the party’s proposals regarding pension reform.

This should not have too much impact on the parliament’s next no-confidence vote, which is due on Thursday and was tabled by the hard-left France Unbowed, or LFI, party with the the Green party and the French Communist Party. However this time, the far-right National Rally has declared that it won’t vote against the government.

But there is no guarantee for any future decisions. That insecurity is particularly pertinent with regard to the French state budget for 2025. Parliament will debate this again in February.

In order to secure the support of the PS, the government is going to have to offer a lot more, explained Benjamin Morel, a lecturer in public law at Paris-Pantheon-Assas University.

“For example, they [the PS] are demanding that 4,000 job cuts in the education sector be removed from the budget and that taxes be raised for the rich,” Morel told DW. “Without very concrete promises, the PS will under no circumstances take the risk of distancing itself from the other members of the left-wing New Popular Front alliance.”

The New Popular Front is a broad coalition of left-wing parties that came together, to some observers’ surprise, shortly before the summer elections. It includes four parties on the left — the PS, the LFI, the Greens and the Communists — who previously spent more time competing against one another than collaborating.

Should the French government collapse again, things will be increasingly difficult for President Macron, especially if he has to find another new prime minister. Some French parties, including the LFI and RN, are already calling for him to resign and for the presidential elections to be brought forward.

Bayrou’s clever strategy

Nicolas Roussellier, a history professor at Paris university, Sciences Po, thinks that Bayrou’s suggestion of a “conclave” is clever.

“He is using a method of social democracy that dates back to France’s Fourth Republic, which ran from 1945 to 1958,” he told DW. Christian Democrats and Socialists jointly designed the French social system at that time.

“By allowing collective bargaining partners to negotiate behind closed doors, he is buying himself more time,” Roussellier pointed out. “The Socialists won’t sanction the government if this could interrupt negotiations about a more just pension system. But then parliament would have to robustly negotiate any legislative proposal that arises from this. After all, it won’t  be coming from Macron or Bayrou or any other political opponent.”

Bayrou’s method could even offer French Social Democrats an opportunity to reorient themselves, suggests Luc Rouban, a senior research fellow at the Centre for Political Research at Sciences Po.

“The PS wants to get out of the shadow of the too-radical LFI in order to put up its own candidate for the 2027 presidential election,” Rouban explained. “If it makes peace with Bayrou, it could attract more voters from the center.”

If Bayrou’s plan works, he might even be in the running to become France’s next president himself, Rouban noted. “Few people believe he can do that. But his big advantage is that many underestimate him,” he added.

Roussellier agreed, saying that in his speech Bayrou had echoed ideas from the French political center.  “In such a polarized time, he did not attack anyone and repeatedly said that you have to talk to all sides,” Roussellier said. “He showed that his feet are firmly on the ground.”

This might even garner Bayrou some votes in rural areas, he suggested, especially from voters who have given more support to the far-right RN since the early 2000s. Unlike the RN’s Le Pen, Bayrou, who is from a farming family in Pau, southwestern France, grew up in the countryside.

“That makes him all the more authentic,” Roussellier concluded.

This story was originally published in German.