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France’s new prime minister François Bayrou has selected Eric Lombard, head of state-backed financial group Caisse des Dépôts, as finance minister, handing him the key role of trying to enact a budget for next year.
Lombard will be tasked with coming up with a taxation and spending plan for 2025 that can be approved by France’s raucous hung parliament, while also starting to repairs the country’s degraded public finances.
Bayrou’s predecessor, Michel Barnier, was ousted by the National Assembly in a vote of no confidence earlier this month because of opposition from leftwing and far-right political parties to his deficit-cutting budget.
On Monday Bayrou set the ambitious goal of trying to get as close as possible to Barnier’s target of reducing France’s deficit to 5 per cent of GDP by the end of 2025, down from more than 6 per cent this year.
“I think we need to find something around 5 (per cent of GDP), a little more than 5, that will enable us to reach an agreement and strike a balance,” he told BFM TV.
Bayrou said “the priority should be on cutting unproductive public spending”, adding that companies could be asked to pay higher taxes for a “temporary period”.
Members of Bayrou’s cabinet were unveiled on Monday after days of wrangling between him and President Emmanuel Macron, who officially names the ministers after recommendations from the premier.
Macron and Bayrou are under pressure to end political turmoil in France by creating a government that can survive and pass crucial measures in the divided parliament.
France is on its fourth prime minister this year, an unprecedented level of churn in France’s Fifth Republic, which was founded in 1958.
Barnier’s administration only lasted three months, making him the shortest-serving premier.
Brussels and financial markets have been scrutinising France to see if it can begin to reduce its deficit, which is far above the EU limit of 3 per cent of GDP.
French Prime Minister Francois Bayrou, right, on Monday with interior minister Bruno Retailleau, who keeps his position in the cabinet © AP
Bayrou, who leads the small MoDem party that has been allied with Macron’s centrist bloc in parliament since 2017, does not have enough votes to pass a budget.
If Bayrou seeks to override lawmakers and invoke a clause in France’s constitution to pass the budget, as Barnier did, he will be vulnerable to a no-confidence vote.
A stop-gap emergency budget was approved by parliament last week to avoid a shutdown of government services in January.
Lombard, a 66-year-old former banker and technocrat, has led Caisse des Dépôts since Macron in 2017 selected him to run the group, which makes investments in public housing, infrastructure and green projects.
On defence and international diplomacy, which are considered the domain of the president and not the prime minister, Macron has chosen continuity by keeping on loyalist Sébastien Lecornu as minister of the armies and Jean-Noël Barrot as minister of foreign affairs. Both served in Barnier’s government.
Roughly half the ministers in Barnier’s administration have been retained in the same briefs by Bayrou.
Among them is Bruno Retailleau, a rightwinger who made his mark as interior minister with tough talk on immigration and crime.
Former premier Élisabeth Borne, also from Macron’s centrist camp, will return as education minister.
The political turmoil in France began when Macron called early parliamentary elections in June, only to lose and usher in a more fractured National Assembly.
Marine Le Pen’s far-right Rassemblement National plus a leftist bloc made up of the far-left France Unbowed, Socialists, Communists and Greens voted to oust Barnier as premier.
Le Pen, whose party is the biggest in the National Assembly, sealed Barnier’s fate when she rejected concessions on his proposed budget.
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To try to avoid being beholden to Rassemblement National, Bayrou sought to win over moderate leftwing lawmakers by offering concessions and posts in what he said would be a national unity government.
Although the Socialists, Greens and Communists initially seemed open to such a deal, they subsequently decided Bayrou was not offering enough, and none joined his government.
“This is not a government but a provocation,” said Socialist party chief Olivier Faure.
In a sign of how Rassemblement National still holds sway, Bayrou was forced to abandon the nomination of Xavier Bertrand, a rightwing politician and longtime adversary of Le Pen, as justice minister. She signalled his presence in Bayrou’s government would displease her party.
Bayrou instead picked Gérald Darmanin, a Macron ally and former interior minister, to be justice minister.
“The failure to come to terms with the left places this government in the same fragile position as the previous one,” said Chloé Morin, political analyst and author.
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