French President Emmanuel Macron.
Credit: Reuters Photo
Paris: Michel Barnier, the new French prime minister, did not thank President Emmanuel Macron for appointing him in his first remarks upon taking office last week. This was a declaration of independence.
The remarks were pointed in other ways. "We will certainly act more than we talk," Barnier, 73, a pragmatist of the center-right, said, with a verbose president clearly in mind. He added that wisdom often comes from the poorest and humblest members of society "if one takes the time to listen."
Again, the little barb was clearly pointed at a remote Macron, often impervious to counsel and dismissive of the needy.
This was a moment of "rupture," in Barnier's words. It was the end of an era, the return of the French old guard summarily evicted from the political arena when the upstart Macron triumphed in 2017; and it came at a moment when not even the lingering glory of the Paris Olympics can obscure the economic, social and political crisis faced by France.
During his seven years in office, Macron, 46, never before encountered, nor would he have tolerated, such conduct from prime ministers, who sometimes seemed little more than his pliant playthings. But, with almost three years left of his presidency, he is weakened. His party is no longer the largest in a fractured parliament, his popularity is low, and his judgment is questioned.
The Fifth Republic was created in 1958 to curb instability through an all-powerful presidency. When the president is diminished, as now, an institutional vacuum takes hold.
French presidents have lost their majorities before, but always to a dominant opposition force that was then able to form a stable government, under what the French call a cohabitation. After a July parliamentary election, Macron had no clear winner to choose from -- a unique situation in France, where cross-party coalition building is very uncommon.
The French crisis has been on full display since Macron, without informing his then-prime minister, Gabriel Attal, 35, dissolved the 577-seat lower house of parliament and called the snap elections three months ago.
A left-wing alliance came in first with 193 seats in those elections, only to lose through dogmatism and disarray. Barnier's conservative Republicans languished in fourth place with 47 seats, only to win. A show of unified determination kept Marine Le Pen's far-right National Rally from power, only for Macron to give the party and its allies, with 142 seats, an effective veto over the new government.
In the end, Macron, who has always portrayed the xenophobic National Rally as antithetical to French democracy, shot himself in the foot, which is painful. The National Rally's elevation to arbiter was the price he had to pay.
"I believe that as of today, Mr. Barnier is a prime minister under surveillance," Jordan Bardella, Le Pen's 28-year-old protege, declared in a TV interview this week. "We will undoubtedly have an arbitration role in the coming months."
His claim was based on solid math. The left is implacably opposed to Barnier. If the extreme right at any moment joins in opposition, the 335 votes of the left and far right will be more than enough to bring the prime minister down. In other words, Le Pen only has to judge when renewed turmoil and ungovernability will best serve her bid to succeed Macron in 2027.
This is Barnier's core dilemma. A former French foreign minister and European Union commissioner who negotiated Brexit, he is a patient dealmaker who likes to quote his mother's saying that "sectarianism is always a sign of weakness." He has said there were will be no "red lines" in his attempt to form a government.
The task will be arduous and the urgency is great. More than 50 days of political paralysis before Barnier's appointment worsened an already grave French economic situation.
With both France's deficit and debt rising, the European Union has reprimanded the country for breaching fiscal rules, and a downgrade from one rating agency and warnings from two others in recent months have rattled French confidence.
As a result, the budget is Barnier's first priority.
But how he will find the billions of euros in savings and additional revenue needed to stabilize the fiscal situation without further sharpening social tensions and angering already struggling families is unclear. A near-impossible balancing act appears to await him.
Barnier is of the moderate center-right family often referred to in France as Gaullism. He dislikes the jingoistic National Rally and the dogmatic far left in roughly equal measure. Yet he will have to offer concessions if he wants his government to have any hope of long-term survival.
In practice, this will likely mean a tough line on immigration to comfort the National Rally. Barnier has already said borders are far too porous. Other demands of the National Rally include a change in the French parliamentary election system to introduce proportional representation, and lowering costs for the less privileged, especially their monthly energy bills.
To appease the left and labor unions, whose capacity to bring demonstrators into the streets is a near constant threat, Barnier may have to reopen the issue of Macron's signature and bitterly contested 2023 law raising the retirement age in France to 64 from 62.
This was an attempt to curb the ballooning cost of pensions for an aging, longer-lived population and to bring France closer to European norms, but it also proved to be an unpardonable offense to the French view of a proper work-life balance. Many French people see retirement as the dawn of a more pleasurable life.
Barnier, who once urged raising the retirement age to 65, will not seek to revoke the law but has said it may be possible to "improve it," without specifying how. Any such improvement, however, seems likely to raise government costs at a moment when France is desperate to reduce them.
Macron would also be particularly sensitive to any tampering with the law. His goal has been a business-friendly France. His policies have drawn enormous foreign investment and significant innovation in a growing tech sector. He emerged from the Socialist Party, but it became clear over time that he is a politician of the center-right, one reason for some of the anger directed at him.
He and his entourage have made clear he will now govern differently -- more as arbiter and guarantor of the Republic than as top-down, all-directing leader. Only time will tell how far he will honor this commitment.
But it is already clear that the high point of Macronism -- a centrist mix of shifting policies without an effective political party dedicated to marginalizing the left and right and rendering those labels redundant -- is long passed. Right and left are resurgent.
Booed at the closing of the Paralympics last weekend, despite his Olympic success, Macron is a much reduced figure, at least on the domestic front.
As for Barnier, he was chosen in the end by Macron as the best hope for institutional stability. But he was hardly the choice of the French electorate that voted in July, and that is an institutional problem that may prove hard to overcome.