Paris: France announced a new centre-right government on Saturday over two months after divisive elections that produced a hung parliament. French President Emmanuel Macron's chief of staff announced the formation of the new government after weeks of political uncertainty between several parties.
Conservative French Prime Minister Michel Barnier put together the government after weeks of difficult negotiations. Antoine Armand, who is 33 and a graduate of France's top administration school, will serve as finance minister and Jean-Noel Barrot will become foreign minister in a government composed largely of centrist and conservative parties, Alexis Kohler said from the Elysee Palace late on Saturday. Sebastien Lecornu will stay on as defence minister, he added.
There are questions over how stable the new government will prove to be, and whether it will manage to push reform measures through parliament, analysts say, with the adoption of the 2025 budget a first, tough challenge. The government, led by Barnier, the European Union's former Brexit negotiator, will face the tough task of having to plug a gaping hole in public finances, which could involve having to decide on politically toxic tax rises.
An end to political paralysis
France has been on the brink of government paralysis since elections for the National Assembly earlier this month resulted in a split among three major political groupings: the New Popular Front leftist coalition, Macron's centrist allies and the far-right National Rally of Marine Le Pen. The New Popular Front won the most seats but fell well short of the outright majority needed to govern on its own.
The leftist coalition's three main parties, the hard-left France Unbowed, the Socialists and the Greens, have urged the president to turn to them to form the new government, yet their internal talks have turned into a harsh dispute over whom to choose as prime minister.
Macron chooses Barnier to lead government
Macron named Barnier, a 73-year-old veteran politician as prime minister earlier this month, but the lengthy talks he had to lead to pull together a team were an illustration of the tough tasks ahead. The centrist and conservative parties managed to pull forces, but will depend on others, and in particular Marine Le Pen's far right National Rally (RN), to stay in power and get bills adopted by a very fractured parliament.
"The centrist government is de facto a minority administration," Eurointelligence analysts said in a note. Its ministers "will not only have to agree amongst each other but also will need votes from opposition parties for its bills to pass in the assembly. This means offering even more concessions and manoeuvring."
The RN gave tacit support to Barnier's premiership, but reserved the right to back out at any point if its concerns over immigration, security and other issues were not met. "I'm angry to see a government that looks set to recycle all the election losers," Mathilde Panot, who leads the hard-left LFI group of lawmakers, told TF1 television.
(Reuters)
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