French President Emmanuel Macron has named Michel Barnier as prime minister virtually two months after France’s snap elections resulted in political impasse.
Mr Barnier, 73, is the EU’s former chief Brexit negotiator and led talks with the UK authorities between 2016 and 2019.
A veteran of the right-wing Republicans (LR) celebration, he has had an extended political profession and stuffed varied senior posts, each in France and inside the EU.
He’ll now must kind a authorities that might want to survive a Nationwide Meeting divided into three huge political blocs, with none in a position to kind a transparent majority.
Three years in the past Mr Barnier mentioned he needed to tackle President Macron for the French presidency, saying he needed to restrict and take management of immigration. He finally didn’t be the chosen as a candidate by his celebration.
Mr Barnier can be France’s oldest prime minister for the reason that Fifth Republic got here into being in 1958.
He’s set to succeed Gabriel Attal, France’s youngest ever prime minister, who President Macron first appointed prime minister in early 2024 and who has stayed in submit as caretaker since July.
Mr Macron’s selection of prime minister has already prompted discontent inside the the left-wing New Well-liked Entrance (NFP), which gained essentially the most seats within the July snap election.
Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the chief of the novel France Unbowed (LFI) – the most important of the 4 events that make up NFP, reacted angrily. The election had been “stolen from the French folks”, he claimed.
As an alternative of coming from the the alliance that got here first on 7 July, he complained that the prime minister could be “a member of a celebration that got here final on the elections.”
“That is now basically a Macron-Le Pen authorities,” he mentioned, referring to the chief of the far-right Nationwide Rally.
Mr Mélenchon then referred to as for folks to hitch a left-wing protest towards Mr Macron’s choice deliberate for Saturday.
