France’s president, , said he would name a new prime minister “within days” to replace Michel Barnier, who formally resigned on Thursday, a day after opposition lawmakers voted to topple his government.
His goal is “a prime minister and a new government capable of uniting and drawing up the new state budget and which will not be in danger of falling from a new motion of censure”.
For this reason, he has started successive contacts to find the right person who could have this role. But what could this be? The foreign media present five possible candidates for Michel Barnier.
Sebastian Lecornou
Sébastien Lecornou defected from the centre-right Les Républicains party and endorsed Macron’s presidency in 2017, becoming one of the president’s staunchest allies. He joined Macron’s government alongside Bruno Le Maire, Macron’s longtime finance minister, and former interior minister Gérald Darmanin, who had also defected from the conservatives.
Lecornou, 38, most recently served as defense minister in the outgoing Barnier government, overseeing increases in defense spending and supporting French military aid to Ukraine.
Investigative news website Mediapart and newspaper Libération reported that Lecornou had dined earlier in the year with Macron’s archrival Marine Le Pen of the far-right National Alarm (RN) and discussed the war in Ukraine. Lecornou denied this meeting.
Francois Bayrou
François Bairou, 73, is a veteran centrist whose Democratic Movement (MoDem) party has been part of Macron’s governing coalition since 2017.
Bayrou, a longtime mayor of the southwestern city of Pau who has made his rural roots central to his political identity, decided against a fourth presidential run in 2017, instead rallying behind Macron.
Macron appointed Bairou as justice minister, but he resigned just weeks later amid an investigation into his party’s alleged fraudulent employment of parliamentary aides.
He was cleared of fraud charges this year.
Bernard Cazeneuve
Bernard Cazeneuve was a senior figure in the Socialist Party before resigning in 2022 from the party, angered by its decision to strike an electoral deal with the hard-left Insubordinate France (LFI).
Cazeneuve, 61, served as prime minister during the final months of Socialist Francois Hollande’s presidency. Before that, he was the interior minister, responsible for security during the Charlie Hebdo attack and the attack by Islamic militants in Paris on November 13, 2015.
Cazeneuve’s selection would be aimed at encouraging socialist lawmakers to move away from the alliance with the LFI, the Greens and the Communists and to widen a centrist governing group.
His name had also been floated over the summer as Macron sought a prime minister following fruitless early elections that brought in the current fractured parliament. Eventually, he was passed over for Barnier.
Xavier Bertrand
Xavier Bertrand, 59, is a center-right politician who leads the northern deindustrialized Hauts de France region, where Macron has sought to develop an ecosystem around electric vehicle batteries.
Bertrand served as a minister under the conservative presidencies of Jacques Chirac and Nicolas Sarkozy and took part in the Republican primary contest ahead of the 2022 presidential election.
Bertrand, a former insurer who was once nicknamed “floc floc” for the sound his rubber-soled shoes made on the stone floor of parliament, was also among the names Macron considered over the summer for the role of prime minister.
Francois Barouin
Francois Barouin, 59, is a centre-right career politician whose father was a student and friend of the late President Chirac.
He was briefly finance minister, after a stint as budget minister, at the height of the European sovereign debt crisis in 2011-2012. In 2022 he was appointed chairman of Barclays France.
Barouin has been mayor of Troyes in Champagne since 1995.
