A weekend of consultations. After his appointment to Matignon this Friday, December 13, after a long fight fought in the shadows, the new Prime Minister François Bayrou is working on the composition of his government. The head of government, who was pleading this summer for a “team” of rather “experienced” “personalities”, will have to find the right balance between the political forces ready to support him.
The head of state set the road map a week ago. The day after the censorship of Michel Barnier, Emmanuel Macron indicated in a televised speech that his successor would be responsible for “forming a government of general interest” with a “tight” staff. In other words, not like the plethoric one of its predecessor, which had around forty members from the start. The idea is undoubtedly more to copy the first list of Gabriel Attal, who first surrounded himself with around fifteen ministers at the end of January, before however adding twenty more at the beginning of February.
It will be necessary to fill a certain number of essential portfolios: Economy, Interior, Defense, Justice, Foreign Affairs, Education, Agriculture, Social Affairs, without forgetting the spokesperson and relations with Parliament.
Moscovici, Bertrand…
For casting, the new head of government already knows what profiles he is looking for. Well before the appointment of Michel Barnier, François Bayrou was already pleading in mid-August for a government “made up of personalities of character” and “sufficiently experienced”, coming from “the left, the center and the right”, all “Republicans, excluding the extremes” .
This definition could correspond, for example, to a figure like Bernard Cazeneuve. The two men have also become closer in recent months: invited to the MoDem summer school at the end of September, the former socialist Prime Minister judged as recently as last week that the centrist leader had “all the qualities ” to make “a good Prime Minister”. Nothing indicates, however, that Bernard Cazeneuve, whose name was regularly mentioned to become Prime Minister in recent days, agrees to enter the government, even for a position like that of Minister of Foreign Affairs.
Other names of tenors are also mentioned, in addition to the few major personalities of the MoDem who should accompany him in the next government. On the left, that of the former boss of Bercy, Pierre Moscovici, today president of the Court of Auditors. On the right, the former Minister of Labor and Health, Xavier Bertrand, now exiled to the Hauts-de-France region. But would they leave their strongholds for an executive seat more ejectable than ever? The short-lived duration of the previous Barnier government could cool many political figures.
Bruno Retailleau, a scarecrow for the left
The leaders of the Assembly, Gabriel Attal and Laurent Wauquiez, new strong men of their respective parties (Renaissance and Les Républicains), had remained cautiously outside the Barnier team. Will they do the same? Conversely, Bruno Retailleau left the reins of the right in the Senate to become Minister of the Interior, where he hopes to stay. The new Prime Minister has already spoken with Bruno Retailleau on Friday evening. The latter asked for “guarantees”, particularly on immigration, to participate in the government, his entourage told AFP.
Problem: not all “personalities” are compatible. The Bruno Retailleau case, in fact, turns out to be delicate. A part of the left thus threatens to censor François Bayrou in turn if he retains the current Minister of the Interior. “I don’t see what other choice we would have,” warned the national secretary of the Ecologists, Marine Tondelier. “We will wait in the coming days to see what he does. Today, I have difficulty seeing how he convinces us not to censor him, especially if he does not call us, and if his first political gesture, “is to receive Bruno Retailleau, it’s still a bad start, but it’s up to him: he has his own censorship in his hands”, explained Marine Tondelier on France Inter this Saturday morning. The spokesperson for the PS, Chloé Ridel, also considered the retention of Bruno Retailleau at the Interior problematic. “If he returns him to the government, he risks ending up like Michel Barnier”, overthrown three months after his appointment, she judged on the social network X.
Civil society acclaimed
The socialists, for their part, decided to remain in opposition and therefore refused to enter the government, which further limits the potential breeding ground. And on the right, Republican leaders are waiting “for the Prime Minister to explain his project” before deciding on “possible participation”.
In addition, the French want the future government led by François Bayrou, not yet announced, to be mainly composed of ministers from civil society (62%), while, at the party level, the preference of respondents is for the Parti Socialist (55%), The Republicans (53%) and the MoDem (51%), according to a Toluna Harris Interactive survey for LCI.
Another pitfall to take into account: the essential gender parity within the government team. For the moment, apart from the outgoing Catherine Vautrin (Minister of Territories and Decentralization) and Rachida Dati (Minister of Culture), the names of female “personalities” are rarely mentioned.