With the Bernard Cazeneuve and Xavier Bertrand hypotheses swept aside, the Michel Barnier lead relaunched the debates on Wednesday evening.
Michel Barnier at Matignon? This is the hypothesis that is circulating on September 4. While the name of the new Prime Minister was eagerly awaited this Wednesday, setting the media in a frenzy, The Figaro dampened the hopes of the French by revealing early in the evening that Gabriel Attal would have to sleep one more night at Matignon. “A member of his camp does not even rule out that we will have to wait until after Sunday, the end of the Paralympic Games,” he even indicated. on X the journalist of the daily newspaper Louis Hausalter.
Worse still, while the noose seemed to be tightening in the last 24 hours on two options, namely Bernard Cazeneuve or Xavier Bertrand – the Thierry Beaudet hypothesis seems to have finally been ruled out – the journalist suggested that the President of the Republic was considering burying these two leads and even “testing new names”.
It did not take long before a first surname was mentioned. In the columns of Opinionthe name of Michel Barnier, former negotiator of the European Union for the conditions of Brexit and candidate in the primary of the right in view of the presidential election of 2022, who intended at the time to “bring together the right, the center and others”, was not long in coming out. The daily newspaper suggests that this hypothesis would be preferred by the Secretary General of the Élysée, Alexis Kohler, who would have argued since the beginning in favor of a rather technical profile for Matignon. A point on which Michel Barnier seems to correspond.
Minister under Balladur, Juppé and Fillon, deputy of Savoie, senator and even European deputy, the native of La Tronche, near Grenoble (Isère), today aged 73, has a CV that is, to say the least, quite full. As the The ParisianMichel Barnier is especially considered less divisive than Xavier Bertrand and David Lisnard, the other right-wing personalities mentioned for this position.
On the right, some want to believe that “Barnier is serious”. However, the former Brexit negotiator should, like the others, be censored by the New Popular Front. “Barnier is a right-wing policy. The issue is no longer even the casting, but the line. Macron must now assume what he wants as a coalition in Parliament”, reacted the socialist Pierre Jouvet to the capital’s daily newspaper on Wednesday evening. If Barnier’s name did indeed rekindle speculation on Wednesday evening, his nomination to Matignon would therefore, at this stage, not be a given!