France has a new government where the left gets almost nothing.
These 52 days of drama, first over the appointment of the prime minister and then the government, began to tire even the French themselves. In short, almost all the parties that entered parliament after the snap elections considered themselves winners. This meant, in their view, that they had the right to propose their own candidate for prime minister to the president. Macron, realizing that he had made a mistake by calling early elections, did everything he could to force the left to withdraw their candidate from the race, and as a result, Michel Barnier, a right-wing politician, became the head of the cabinet.
Formally, the prime minister chooses the cabinet and the president approves it. But not under the current circumstances. Macron took an active role in the selection of future ministers, despite the well-known constitutional mantra: the president presides, the prime minister governs.
«The president is meddling in everything while pretending nothing is happening», said one of the Republican leaders. «He’s playing with fire. If Michel resigns, it will be Macron who ends up on the front line».
In fact, Michel Barnier, who had been given «full freedom of action», was about to slam the door and resign after less than two weeks on the job, but the President of the Senate persuaded him not to at the last moment.
The right-wing parties had declared that they would block all decisions if the cabinet moved to the left, and vice versa. In the end, Marine Le Pen’s National Rally became the arbiter of Barnier’s appointment. Although the National Rally didn’t get a single ministerial portfolio, there were persistent rumors that Macron had first called Marine before the appointment, and that his confidant had previously organized a dinner between Le Pen and a center-right representative to resolve the issue of possible no-confidence votes against the future government by the National Rally.
Without these agreements, it would have been pointless to form a cabinet — it would have been a dysfunctional government, with all decisions blocked in parliament. And it was impossible to stay without a cabinet for too long. But there have been worse crises. Iraq went 289 days without a government, and Belgium 541 days. In fact, these endless consultations were the cause of the government crisis in France.
In the end, a relatively homogeneous government was formed, representing the political spectrum from the center to the conservative right. The Republicans got 10 ministries, Macron’s Renaissance party got 12, and the remaining portfolios went to centrist parties that are sometimes hard to distinguish from each other and sometimes seem unnecessary.
The Socialists received only one portfolio, but an important one — the Ministry of Justice. Didier Migaud will have to work under difficult conditions: there are many unfinished reforms and the funds allocated to the Ministry of Justice until the end of Macron’s presidential term are almost exhausted.
This concerns the construction of new prisons — France’s prisons are overcrowded at 200% of capacity, a record for Europe. In two years, 15,000 new prison places must be built. There are 4,500 vacancies for prison staff that need to be filled. He must also complete the reform of juvenile justice and the protection of young people on the verge of bankruptcy. These are just the urgent tasks. And something must be done about the illegal drug trade — gangs in Marseille are now shooting at each other nonstop.
Thus, Macron’s supporters retain key positions in the government. Traditionally, the ministries of defense and foreign affairs are the prerogative of the president. The defense ministry will again be headed by Sébastien Lecornu, who served in the previous government, and the new foreign minister is Jean-Noël Barrot.
Some diplomats at the Quai d’Orsay (as the French Foreign Ministry is called) believe that the new minister is «living off the reputation of his father», former minister and European Commissioner Jacques Barrot. Others believe that he played an important role in the recent European Parliament election campaign. Barrot worked in the Foreign Ministry on information about foreign (especially Russian) influence on the course of that campaign. His department in the ministry is Europe.
Barrot will face his trial by fire at the upcoming UN General Assembly. In New York, people will want to hear from him on issues such as Gaza, the extreme tensions between Israel and Lebanon, and the Ukraine and Sudan dossiers.
Before moving to the Quai d’Orsay in a recent reshuffle, Barrot worked at the Ministry of Digital Affairs. One of his key projects was protecting children from harmful content online — a task that involved taking on the all-powerful social media giants. During last year’s riots, he even targeted Twitter (now X) and TikTok, demanding the removal of dozens of pieces of material that incited violence. Before that, he raised the possibility of banning Twitter if the platform failed to moderate its content in line with EU rules.
The finance ministry will now be headed by Antoine Armand, 33 years old, a record for a minister, considering that Macron himself became finance minister at the age of 39. The young official doesn’t come from a working class background. He is the great-grandson of Louis Armand, who ran the national railroad company, later became the architect of the country’s electrification, and eventually headed Euratom (the European Atomic Energy Community).
In the fall of 2022, Antoine Armand was the rapporteur for the commission investigating why France had lost its energy sovereignty. Almost all of the behind-the-scenes players in the French energy sector were called to testify, as well as three former prime ministers and even two former presidents — Sarkozy and Hollande. He is believed to be a staunch Macronist when it comes to the president’s push to simplify government and debureaucratize in general.
Armand and Laurent Saint-Martin, appointed Minister of the Budget and Public Accounts, will soon face the urgent task of presenting the 2025 budget to Parliament. This week, the Prime Minister received the preliminary draft of the document, and it looks bad: a deficit of 5.5% and a debt of 3.1 trillion euros. The challenge for the 2025 budget is not to spend more than this year. The total budget for the ministries is 492 billion euros. But given the expected inflation, this will mean not just limiting spending, but cutting the budget by at least 2%.
The Prime Minister has already proposed a tax increase as a solution, which has met with fierce opposition from all political parties. Protests are inevitable.
Another layer of endless debates — about the rise of illegal immigration — will concern the new Interior Minister, Republican Bruno Retailleau. He is a proponent of tough measures against illegal immigrants, for which he has periodically faced criticism from the left.