Michel Barnier, France’s most fleeting prime minister

History, which is accustomed to beginning its great stories at the end, will now remember 73-year-old Michel Barnier as the oldest prime minister of France’s Fifth Republic, and also its most fleeting. It is a sad and clear metaphor for the new politics, a cruel centrifugation machine that cares not for identity documents or service records. But Barnier, who has just been swallowed up by a no-confidence vote whose sole purpose was to hurt the president, Emmanuel Macron, is not just any politician.

The man who organized the 1992 Winter Olympics in Albertville, in his native Savoy, was above all the person who had defeated British diplomacy: the great negotiator who, through a calm demeanor and a large dose of phlegm, managed to unhinge his interlocutors on the other side of the English Channel and reach a good agreement for the European Union partners after the United Kingdom quit the bloc. But the upright, Gaullist and deeply pro-European Barnier, who could have retired quietly with that victory imprinted in the collective memory of Europe, was overcome by ambition and, who knows, perhaps also by a certain sense of patriotism. He accepted, perhaps imprudently, a devilishly tough assignment given to him by Macron last September, with instructions to try to mend the irreconcilable.

Barnier underestimated the hatred, anger and thirst for revenge that had accumulated in the French parliament in recent years. He ignored the months of protests by farmers, yellow vests, unions. Perhaps he had not analyzed, as he did do during his last televised interview on Tuesday evening, that these elements did not bode well, and he showed up in Matignon, the seat of government, feeling overconfident. His first appearance, alongside his predecessor, Gabriel Attal, was full of moments that bordered on mockery of the young ex-prime minister: “I am sure you can teach me many things, even though you have only been in office for eight months,” he said in his handover speech while Attal displayed a forced smile.

Inside the mind of Barnier, who never missed an opportunity to invoke Charles de Gaulle and “a certain idea of France” (the phrase with which the general began his memoirs), a sequence was taking place in which he alone, with his negotiating skills on the left and the right, would sort out the mess that the President of the Republic had created, not only by thoughtlessly dissolving the Assembly last June after losing the European elections and calling a snap parliamentary election, but also by refusing to allow the left-wing alliance, victorious after two rounds, to nominate a candidate for prime minister (the person they had proposed was the technocrat Lucie Castets). Barnier did not understand that his end was written.

Barnier was never there, in fact. Because by then, the French government was already in the hands of the far-right Marine Le Pen and her party, the National Rally (RN). The fragmentation of the Assembly into three large blocs and the fact that the victory of the left had been ignored and disregarded placed any of his major decisions in the hands of the 143 RN lawmakers. That is why, from the get-go, Barnier dedicated his time to courting ultra-populism with a string of concessions ― from the appointment of an extremely conservative and tough Interior Minister, Bruno Retailleau, to receiving Le Pen as many times as necessary in Matignon to listen to her demands, to announcing a severe immigration law. The concessions did not end until Wednesday morning, when he was still willing to negotiate whatever was necessary in order to close the budget deal and remain in office.

The problem is that Barnier was no longer a valid interlocutor for the signatories of the no-confidence motion. He was not even the real target of the far right and the left. During these three months, the prime minister (and French citizens) have been living through a kind of government simulation, with officials introducing important measures and working hard on a budget that had to be slashed by €60 billion to prevent the deficit from soaring further. But the expiry date, we now know, was written on the calendar: the first time Barnier invoked Article 49.3 of the Constitution, enabling him to approve a major measure without backing from the lower house of parliament, he triggered the no-confidence vote. One might say that the measure activated on Wednesday in parliament has been a kick to Macron, but in Barnier’s butt.

On Thursday morning Barnier walked into the president’s office, where he was expected to tender his resignation. Some speak of his ambition to return as a candidate for the 2027 presidential elections. But it does not seem likely that his age or the memory of this period that will remain in the collective memory are going to work in his favor.

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