Background Barnier Government Following gains by opposition parties in
the legislative elections called by President
Emmanuel Macron in the summer of 2024,
Gabriel Attal resigned. Macron initially refused his resignation but accepted it on 16 July. On 5 September, Barnier was appointed as prime minister by Macron. On 2 December 2024, Barnier invoked article
49.3 of the French Constitution to adopt the
Social Security budget for 2025 without submitting it to a parliamentary
vote, prompting both the
New Popular Front and the
National Rally to file motions of no confidence against his government. On 4 December, three months into his tenure, the
Barnier government collapsed by a vote of
no confidence in
National Assembly in a 331–244 vote.
Searching for a new Prime Minister Prime Minister Michel Barnier then presented his government's resignation in the evening to the President of the Republic, who accepted it. He ensured that current affairs were handled with the government pending the formation of a new government from 6 to 13 December. After the resignation of the Barnier government, negotiations took place between the President of the Republic and the various parliamentary groups, with the exception of the
LFI,
RN and
UDR. These discussions led
Olivier Faure,
First Secretary of the
Socialist Party, to consider a non-censorship agreement on the condition that the Prime Minister be left-wing. Over the course of a week, various candidates were considered for the position of
Prime Minister, including
Bernard Cazeneuve,
Sebastien Lecornu,
François Villeroy de Galhau,
François Baroin,
Roland Lescure and François Bayrou.
Bayrou's appointment After being rejected the day before on 12 December, Bayrou met the President at the
Élysée the following morning. At the end of a long, heated discussion (with fears of a break with the
MoDem), Emmanuel Macron finally appointed him Prime Minister on 13 December 2024. At 73 years old, he is the second oldest serving prime minister, after Michel Barnier, to come to power. He is also considered a loyal supporter of President Macron, whom he supported in
2017 presidential election. He was nominated
Minister of State and
Justice in the
first Philippe Government, between May and June 2017. François Bayrou was supported by the Macronist bloc, while being rejected by La France Insoumise, while the other left-wing parties and the far right were awaiting the measures taken by the Prime Minister. Bayrou, in his speech, recalled the importance of social justice, republicanism, national reconciliation, the need to overcome a serious crisis that is ravaging Europe and France, and thanked Barnier for his work as prime minister. The case of corruption for embezzlement of European funds, of which Bayrou was acquitted in autumn 2023 due to lack of evidence, was widely reported in the media. The
Socialist Party, in a letter to the new prime minister, asked him to give up applying
article 49.3 of the Constitution in exchange for no censure, announced that socialists members "will not participate in government and will therefore remain in opposition in Parliament", and blamed the President for "aggravating the political crisis". == Collapse ==