French President Emmanuel Macron has appointed Francois Bayrou, leader of the centrist Democratic Movement party and head of the city of Pau, as prime minister, the Elysee Palace press service said.
Bayrou is 73 years old. He was justice minister from 2017 to 2019 and served as education minister in the 1990s.
On December 4, Parliament passed a vote of no confidence in the government of the previous Prime Minister Michel Barnier, the next day Macron accepted the resignation of the Cabinet.
Barnier’s cabinet was formed only in the second half of September. It took Macron almost three months to choose a new head of government after the elections in the National Assembly, the results of which none of the parties failed to get a majority.
Macron selected a new prime minister for a week, while he considered the candidacy of the previous prime minister for three months. As Le Monde notes, Macron again had to “stall for time” to find a compromise figure amid disagreements in a parliament split into three.
The day before, representatives of theRN National Rally threatened to oust the government again if a representative of the extreme left became prime minister and teamed up with the radical left-wing LFI. LFI secretary Manuel Bompard, for his part, promised to call on his allies to call for a vote of no confidence in the government if it is headed by a representative of the Macronist camp.
Le Parisien as recently as last week named Bayrou as the main contender for the premiership alongside the Republican mayor of Troyes, François Baroin, and Defence Minister Sebastien Lecornu. Bayrou arrived at the Elysee Palace on the morning of December 13 for consultations with Macron; until the last moment, the appointment was not certain.
