Who is Michel Barnier, a right-wing Eurosceptic named the new French PM?

Nearly two months after snap parliamentary elections turned Emmanuel Macron and his alliance into a minority in the National Assembly, the French President has named a Eurosceptic right-wing politician as his prime minister.

Macron’s nominee Michel Barnier is a member of Les Republicains (The Republicans), which has only 39 deputies out of 577 seats of the National Assembly in Paris and will need the support of far-right leader Marine Le Pen and her Rassemblement National party.

Incidentally, the 73-year-old Barnier is the oldest of the 26 prime ministers in modern France's Fifth Republic, replacing Gabriel Attal, who, at 34, was the youngest when he took office eight months ago.

The country’s leftist alliance and the largest group in parliament with 193 seats – the New Popular Front (NFP) – was left fuming over Macron’s snub.

Jean-Luc Melenchon, the leader of France Unbowed (LFI) – the leading group in the NFP – described Macron’s decision as an election “robbery”, saying that the next prime minister would be “a member of a party that came last" in the July election.

Predictably, the leftist alliance has decided against supporting a Barnier cabinet. "This is now essentially a Macron-Le Pen government,” Melenchon said.

Macron had called the snap election after his party lost big in the EU parliament elections in June.

Ironically, Barnier had opposed the leader of his party, Eric Ciotti, who had pledged support to Marine Le Pen ahead of the elections and joined the Rassemblement National-led bloc.

Overall, Ciotti has led the Republicans despite dissent within the party. The divided Republicans have been part of Macron’s coalition government until recently.

With or without far-right

Macron’s centrists and Barnier’s party hold 213 seats in the parliament, while Rassemblement National and its allies have 142 seats.

In order to reach the magical majority number of 289, Barnier and Macron need Le Pen’s approval.

Macron met Le Pen and Jordan Bardella, the official head of the RN, last week in an apparent move to seek support for Barnier and other possible candidates.

Le Pen initially signalled that Barnier, an anti-migrant figure, meets some of the party’s requirements. At least he "respected different political forces" like her far-right party, she said.

A far-right-backed Barnier government under Macron, who has long portrayed himself as the last barrier against the rise of Le Pen, seems contradictory even for the blurred political boundaries of Macron, who had formed an election alliance with the leftist NFP at the second round of the July elections to block the RN’s ascendancy to power.

It remains to be seen how Barnier will fare to form a government with support from members who are sharply divided into three large political blocs in parliament.

Monsieur Brexit or Frexit?

Barnier, a seasoned politician who served in different capacities, including as foreign, agriculture and environment minister in numerous governments, is known as Monsieur Brexit in European politics thanks to his role in the tough negotiation process with the UK.

As Brussels’s top negotiator, Barnier made a name for himself as a strong defender of EU institutions against the UK’s nationalist Brexit politicians like Boris Johnson, who won against the ‘remain camp’ but lost the leadership at the end of his political game last year.

In 2021, the pro-EU politician turned into a kind of French nationalist when Barnier decided to run for the presidency as the candidate for the Republicans against Macron.

He advocated the superiority of French sovereignty over the EU, offering to develop a non-EU immigration policy. He also opposed the powers of the European Court of Justice and the European Court of Human Rights over the French state.

All these stances sounded like a politician with a Eurosceptic heart, stirring so much resentment from not only the UK, which has been long lectured by Barnier on EU integrity and its superior values but also from France, one of the founding countries of the European integration project.

Jean Quatremer, a leading French journalist, criticised him for advocating a kind of “Frexit that dare not speak its name amounts to a political suicide, given that his European ‘brand’ was his selling point.”

Frexit is the French version of Brexit, a stance Le Pen and her allies also subscribe to.

“Having dreamed of being a new Jacques Delors, he has ended up as Boris Johnson,” wrote the French journalist to describe the political journey of Barnier, who could not get his party’s nomination for the presidential race in 2021. Delors was a well-known French politician who served as president of the European Commission for a decade from the mid-1980s.

“Michel Barnier is the biggest hypocrite ever born,” said Nigel Farage, the nationalist British politician, who is a fierce opponent of the EU and the leader of the populist UK Independence Party.

Barnier, author of My Secret Brexit Diary, cited the argument of pro-leave advocates to defend himself, saying that British citizens voted for Brexit because they were against globalisation, opposing “a Europe that did not protect them enough, against a Europe that had deregulated and de-industrialised.”

“The same reasons that so many French voters in Marseille and Picardy vote for Jean-Luc Melenchon and Marine Le Pen. We must pay attention to this,” he added.

Now he will have to navigate France's stormy waters – caught between Melenchon, the leading voice of the radical left, and Le Pen, the long-time leader of the far-right, to find support from a divided parliament to get approval for his cabinet.