Michel Barnier’s government was unveiled this Saturday evening, September 21, by Alexis Kohler, the Secretary General of the Elysée. Bruno Retailleau at the Interior, Didier Migaud at Justice, Agnès Pannier-Runacher at Ecological Transition, Jean-Noël Barrot at Foreign Affairs, Antoine Armand at Bercy… Barely known, the new government composition has provoked reactions from all sides of the political spectrum.
“This new government marks the return of Macronism through a back door. What the French have democratically sanctioned, on two occasions, cannot come back through lamentable political games and calculations. It is therefore a government that has no future,” said on X the president of the National Rally, Jordan Bardella, whose party holds the power in the Assembly to censure this team, while a little more than half of the members of the government come from the presidential camp.
“The great alternation that we are calling for, we will continue to prepare it to allow France to recover,” added the leader of the RN deputies, Marine Le Pen. She castigated “a reshuffled government, far removed from the desire for change and alternation expressed last June.”
“This combination has neither legitimacy nor future”
The leader of La France Insoumise, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, denounced the creation of a “government of the losers of the legislative elections”, which “is in the hands of the worrying Minister of the Interior” Bruno Retailleau, “president of the dominant group in the Senate where the content of the texts supported by LR will now be decided”. “This combination has neither legitimacy nor future. We must get rid of it as soon as possible”, he added.
The left has already announced that it will vote for a motion of censure of this government in the Assembly. To pass it, it will need the votes of the extreme right. “Not a new government, a reshuffle. Not a revolution, a restoration. The continuation of Macronism… worse. The socialists will censure this betrayal of the French vote,” wrote the leader of the socialist deputies Boris Vallaud.
“We were promised a government of concord, we have a hard-right government. It is democracy that is humiliated tonight with the end of this paper suspense,” reacted Lucie Castets, the candidate of the New Popular Front for Matignon. “The Barnier government is the victory of Macronism that absorbs new supporters from the Republicans and the left to pursue the same policy that is the mother of the same national bankruptcy,” said Éric Ciotti, who has formed an alliance with the RN.