French President Emmanuel Macron appointed veteran centrist François Bayrou as the fourth Prime Minister of 2024 on Friday, December 13th.
Macron announced the appointment after a nearly two-hour meeting with Bayrou at the Élysée Palace on Friday morning.
Bayrou’s primary task is to pass a special law to extend the 2024 budget, as a more intense budget battle for 2025 is looming early next year.
Earlier this month, pushback in Parliament over the 2025 budget led to the downfall of former Prime Minister Michel Barnier’s government.
Bayrou is expected to announce his list of ministers in the coming days, but he may face the same challenge as Barnier, trying to advance legislation in a hung parliament composed of three opposed factions.
The 73-year-old leader of the Democratic Movement party, Bayrou, is a close ally of Macron, popular even among some National Rally (RN) members on the right, but has not garnered unanimous support from other party members.
According to Reuters, Jordan Bardella, chairman of the right-wing National Rally party, said they will not immediately demand a vote of no confidence in Bayrou.
Macron hopes Bayrou can stabilize the situation, avoid a vote of no confidence, at least until July next year when new parliamentary elections will be held in France. If the government falls again, Macron’s own presidency will inevitably be called into question.
The Democratic Movement party has been part of Macron’s governing coalition since 2017. Bayrou has long served as the mayor of the small town of Pau in the southwest, demonstrating his political base at the local level through three presidential election bids.
Macron appointed Bayrou as Minister of Justice in 2017, but he resigned just weeks later due to allegations of fraudulent employment of parliamentary aides by his party. This year, he was finally cleared of the fraud accusations.