french president Emmanuel Macron appointed key ally Francois Bayrou as his fourth prime minister in 2024 on Friday, but the scale of the challenge facing the veteran centrist was immediately clear as the Socialist Party refused to join his coalition government.
Bayrou (73) made a sober assessment of whether he can tame the hung parliament, which overthrew his predecessor Michel Barnier last week.
"It's a long way, everyone knows that," he told reporters. “I'm not the first to go on a long journey.
France's simmering political malaise has raised doubts about whether Macron will complete his second presidential term in 2027.
It also raised France's borrowing costs, leaving a power vacuum at the heart of Europe, just as Donald Trump heads for the White House and Germany prepares for new elections after the collapse of its ruling coalition.
Bayrou, the founder of the Democratic Movement (MoDem) party, which has been part of Macron's ruling alliance since 2017, has himself run for president three times, drawing on his rural roots as the long-time mayor of the southwestern city of Pau.
His immediate priority will be passing a special bill that would pass the 2024 budget, with a nastier battle over the 2025 belt-tightening bill looming early next year.
Parliament's rejection of the 2025 bill led to Barnier's downfall, and left-wing leaders announced on Friday that they could also try to oust Bayrou if he used special constitutional powers to push through the budget against parliament.
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Bayrou's closeness to the deeply unpopular Macron may also prove a vulnerability.
The Socialist Party, which Macron courted in his search for prime minister, accused the president of ignoring their demands for a left-wing leader in favor of a "risky" Macronist.
"We will not enter the government like that and remain in the opposition," said Boris Vallaud, leader of the Socialist parliamentary bloc.
The reaction to Bayrou's appointment on the left will worry Macron, with the prime minister likely to live day-to-day at the mercy of the president's opponents for the foreseeable future.
Macron will hope Bayrou can stave off a no-confidence vote at least until July, when France can hold new parliamentary elections.
Leaders of the far-left France Unbowed party said they would seek Bayrou's immediate removal, while leaders of other left-wing parties took a softer approach.
Greens leader Marine Tondelier also said she would back a motion of no confidence if the Prime Minister ignored their concerns about taxes and pensions.
Communist leader Fabien Roussel said his party would fire against Bayrou on a case-by-case basis if he promised not to push through the legislation.
Jordan Bardella, president of the far-right National Assembly (RN) party, said he would not call for an immediate no-confidence motion, while fellow RN leader Marine Le Pen said Bayrou should listen to the opposition's budget wishes.
The real test of the 2025 budget is looming
Barnier's budget bill, which aimed to save 60 billion euros ($63 billion) to appease investors increasingly worried about France's 6 percent deficit, was seen by the far right and left as too stingy. The government's inability to find a way out of the stalemate has caused French borrowing costs to rise.
XTB research director Kathleen Brooks said Bayrou's appointment was unlikely to have a major impact on French bonds. But she said France's CAC 40 stock index .FCHI has trailed German stocks by three decades.
"With France still mired in political turmoil, closing this gap is an uphill battle, even with a new prime minister," she wrote.
Macron appointed Bayrou as justice minister in 2017, but he resigned a few weeks later amid an investigation into the alleged fraudulent employment of his party's parliamentary assistants. He was acquitted of fraud this year.
– Correspondent Dominique Vidalon; additional reporting by Michel Rose and Elizabeth Pineau; by Gabriel Stargardter; edited by Richard Lough, Angus MacSwan and Ros Russell
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