Nine days after the no-confidence vote in the National Assembly which toppled the Barnier government, François Bayrou has been appointed Prime Minister by the President of the Republic.
Aged 73, François Bayrou, a former teacher of literature and classical languages in his youth, is an old-timer in French politics, where for 30 years he has embodied a center-right, pro-European and relatively pro-market stance. He is a veteran lawmaker with almost thirty years of legislative experience, a regional “baron” in Nouvelle-Aquitaine, former member of two governments, who had long sought to build a pivotal political force to be reckoned with in order to secure government majorities, before his moment of glory came when he decided to throw his support behind Emmanuel Macron in the 2017 presidential election and obtain a sizeable and highly influential parliamentary group at the National Assembly. For him, his appointment as Prime Minister marks the pinnacle of his political career (see attached biography).
The new Prime Minister now has the responsibility of forming a government that can survive a vote of no-confidence from a National Assembly without a majority.
The next step will be the adoption of the special finance law, the proposed version of which was adopted yesterday in committee at the National Assembly. By way of reminder, this law will allow the government to continue collecting taxes until a finance bill has been passed into law by Parliament. Once this special law is promulgated, the government will pass decrees opening up the minimum appropriations it deems “essential” for public services to continue to be provided, subject to the appropriations made available by the last Finance Act of the previous year.
The new Prime Minister now has the responsibility of forming a government that can survive a vote of no-confidence from a National Assembly without a majority. The next step will be the adoption of the special finance law, the proposed version of which was adopted yesterday in committee at the National Assembly.
The government will need to come up with a legislative vehicle to allocate revenues to specific or adjusted expenditures in relation to 2024, either via a finance law or via a special instrument. In this respect, a cross-party bill could quickly be filed under the accelerated examination procedure. If either the bill or the instrument is adopted, the government will have the resources needed to function, at least at a basic level, until the next finance bills are adopted through the legislative procedure, without having to go through Parliament.
The composition of the government is expected to be announced in the coming days. In the meantime, the special finance law is slated to be examined in a public sitting of the National Assembly this Monday, in the presence of the outgoing Minister of Budget and Public Accounts, as permitted under the French Constitution.
For the most part, the announcement of François Bayrou’s appointment was met with a wait-and-see attitude by the main opposition parties to the outgoing caretaker government. These parties simply spelt out the red lines not to be crossed to prevent another no-confidence vote from being passed. Only the far-left party La France Insoumise (France Unbowed, more radical left – LFI) has indicated that it intends, as a matter of principle, to bring a motion for a vote of no confidence against the future government.
The special law and urgent measures should therefore be adopted, provided there is no new unexpected twist, and should enable the State and the country to function. What happens next will depend on the ability of the country’s new leaders to find the necessary compromises, as the red lines of some are precisely what others are demanding, in a context that is quite similar to the situation experienced by the Barnier government.
In a nutshell, to be continued. Next episode: the announcement of the composition of the next government.
François Bayrou biography
Aged 73, François Bayrou, holder of the “agrégation” (a high-level competitive examination to teach in France) in literature and classical languages and teacher in his youth, is an old hand in French politics, where for 30 years he has embodied a center-right, pro-European and relatively pro-market stance. He founded his political party Mouvement Démocrate (MoDem – Democratic Movement) in 2007 after having led a series of political parties of the same persuasion that have followed one another since the 1990s. He has held just about every elective position at each level of local and regional government in his home region, Nouvelle-Aquitaine, up to the Presidency of the Regional Council of Pyrénées-Atlantiques, and has served as mayor of the town of Pau since 2014. He has also held a number of responsibilities and mandates at national level, including as a lawmaker for close to three decades, Minister of National Education between 1993 and 1997 and, more briefly, Minister of Justice in 2017 following Emmanuel Macron’s election, a position from which he was forced to resign after a case was brought against him involving the misuse of European Parliament funds through fictitious parliamentary assistants (the case was dropped in 2024 due to lack of evidence). He had long sought to build a pivotal political force to be reckoned with in order to secure a government majority, before his moment of glory came when he decided to throw his support behind Emmanuel Macron in the 2017 presidential election and obtain a sizeable and highly influential parliamentary group at the National Assembly. For him, his appointment as Prime Minister marks the pinnacle of his political career.
- Born in 1951 in Bordères in the Pyrénées-Atlantiques region, son of a farmer and former mayor of Bordères, François Bayrou passed the competitive “agrégation” to be qualified to teach literature and classical languages in the public school system and worked as such in the Pyrénées-Atlantiques from 1974 to 1979;
- Young activist and local party official of the Centre des Démocrates Sociaux (CDS, or Center of Social Democrats, a center-right/Christian Democrat party) since 1974 when he was aged 23, he went on to serve as the President of several centrist and center-right parties: the CDS from 1994 to 1995, Force démocrate (FD) from 1995 to 1998, and Union pour la Démocratie Française (UDF, or Union for French Democracy, a center-right party founded in 1978 to support the then President of France, Valéry Giscard d’Estaing – UDF) from 1998 to 2007 before founding Mouvement Démocrate (MoDem) in 2007, of which he remains the president;
- In 1979, he joined the office of the Minister of Agriculture, Pierre Méhaignerie, in the government of Raymond Barre (during the presidency of Valéry Giscard d’Estaing) in 1979 as a policy advisor;
- In 1982, he was elected member of the General Council of Pyrénées-Atlantiques, which he presided from 1992 to 2001. That same year, he was elected member of the Regional Council for the Aquitaine;
- Between 1984 and 1986, he served as an advisor to the President of the European Parliament, Pierre Pfimlin;
- In 1986, he was elected to the National Assembly as a lawmaker for the 2nd district of the Pyrénées-Atlantiques, being re-elected until 2012;
- In 1993, he joined the government as Minister of National Education under the presidency of Jacques Chirac, a portfolio he kept, with his remit being broadened to include Higher Education, Research and Professional Training, until 1997;
- He was elected member of the European Parliament (MEP) after having headed the list of the centrist party in the European elections of 1999. In 2002, he left the European Parliament to dedicate himself more fully to his role as a national lawmaker;
- In 2014, he won back the town of Pau from the Socialists and has since run Pau town hall and the Agglomeration Community of Pau Béarn Pyrénées;
- Emmanuel Macron’s only “institutional” ally when campaigning for the presidential election in 2017, François Bayrou was named Minister of Justice in the first Macron government. He was forced to step down a little more than a month after taking up office due to the case brought against him involving the use by MoDem of fictitious EU parliamentary assistants. In 2024, the case ended up being dropped due to lack of evidence;
- In 2020, President Macron created for him the position of High Commissioner for Planning, with responsibility for leading and coordinating planning and forecasting work carried out on behalf of the State, and informing the choices made by public authorities;
- He has run for President three times: in 2002, when he scored 6.84% of the vote; in 2007, when he scored 18.57%; and in 2012, when he scored 9.13% and, to the general surprise, called for voting in the second round for the Socialist candidate and winner of the election François Hollande (Socialist Party – center-left), who had stood against the incumbent right-wing candidate Nicolas Sarkozy;
- One of his earliest supporters, François Bayrou is considered a loyal follower of the Head of State, and is the Vice-President of Ensemble (Together), an umbrella coalition bringing together all of the political forces supporting Emmanuel Macron.
