President Macron appoints Francois Bayrou as Prime Minister

FRANCE —  France President, Emmanuel Macron on Friday appointed centrist leader Francois Bayrou as prime minister.

Bayrou, the 73-year-old head of the MoDem group which is allied to Macron’s party, was appointed nine days after Michel Barnier’s government was ousted by parliament in a historic no-confidence vote following a standoff over an austerity budget.

This information was contained in a statement by the French presidency.

“The President of the Republic has appointed Mr. Francois Bayrou as prime minister and tasked him with forming a government."

Bayrou is the sixth prime minister of Macron’s mandate after last week’s toppling of Barnier, who became France’s shortest-serving prime minister and lasted only three months.

He is also Macron’s fourth prime minister of 2024.

Bayrou now faces an immediate challenge in putting together a cabinet that can survive a no-confidence vote in a deeply divided parliament and thrash out a 2025 budget in a bid to limit economic turmoil.

The announcement was made after Macron received Bayrou for nearly two hours of talks on Friday.

In recent time, Macron has been confronted with complex political crisis that emerged from snap parliamentary elections this summer — how to secure a government against a no-confidence vote in a bitterly divided lower house where no party or alliance has a majority.

The left-wing New Popular Front (NFP), which was put together to prevent the far-right from coming to power, emerged as the largest bloc in the National Assembly after the summer elections.

Sequence to the move, top leaders of NFP alliance that includes the Socialists, Communists and Greens, had demanded that Macron appoint a prime minister from their ranks.

French far-right leader Marine Le Pen, who emerged as kingmaker after the summer elections and helped topple down the government, has not been part of the most recent talks.

Beyond Bayrou, prime ministerial contenders included former Socialist prime minister Bernard Cazeneuve, Defence Minister Sebastien Lecornu, a Macron loyalist, and former foreign minister Jean-Yves Le Drian.

AFP