Macron Appoints Cabinet as He Seeks to Move France Out of Political Impasse

The government still faces two challenges in the coming weeks: the risk of a no-confidence vote and a tight budget deadline.

President Emmanuel Macron of France on Saturday appointed a new cabinet that marked a strong shift to the right, in a nation so divided that it took more than two months to form a government whose prospects of long-term stability are far from clear.

The announcement from the French presidency came two weeks after Mr. Macron appointed Michel Barnier, a veteran center-right politician, as prime minister, in hopes of moving past the political impasse that has paralyzed France since its inconclusive parliamentary elections this summer.

The new cabinet includes centrists from Mr. Macron’s party and its allies, but also right-wing politicians from Mr. Barnier’s Republican party, some of them in crucial positions — a resurgence for France’s mainstream conservatives, who have been marginalized for much of Mr. Macron’s presidency.

“A team!” Mr. Barnier said on X after the announcement. “And now, to work!”

Mr. Barnier’s protracted negotiations to find a viable coalition in a fractured Parliament provoked tensions with Mr. Macron, who had said the prime minister was free to proceed as he saw fit in choosing ministers. The negotiations also revealed the extent of the political divisions that will make the new government vulnerable at any moment.

The delay was the longest such deliberation in the history of the Fifth Republic, following the longest ever time taken by a president to name a prime minister. Agreeing on a budget will be the government’s first priority, with the country’s debt and budget deficit ballooning amid growing international concern.

Under France’s Constitution, the president chooses the prime minister and appoints the cabinet members on the prime minister’s recommendation.

In the election this summer, a left-wing alliance came in first, with 193 seats, in the 577-member lower house of Parliament. Mr. Macron’s centrist party and its allies have slumped to 165 seats, and Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally and its allies surged to 142. Mr. Barnier’s conservative Republicans languished in fourth place with 47 seats, further complicating the prime minister’s task.

With the left implacably opposed to the new coalition, and enraged by what it sees as Mr. Macron’s flouting of its victorious election result, Mr. Barnier’s government could fall at any moment if the National Rally decides to join a no-confidence vote. In effect, he will govern at the sufferance of Ms. Le Pen and her protégé, Jordan Bardella — who quickly suggested on Saturday that they had no intention of helping Mr. Barnier.

On X, Mr. Bardella, the president of the National Rally, said the cabinet was the result of “pitiful political games and calculations” and had “no future.”

Mr. Barnier’s concern to quiet the far right was evident in his choice of Bruno Retailleau, a staunchly conservative senator from his own party, to the key post of interior minister. In the past, Mr. Retailleau has spoken of “French people on paper” to allude to citizens of recent immigrant descent, as opposed to ancestral citizens, a theme dear to some members of the xenophobic National Rally. Mr. Retailleau is also one of the few nationally prominent members of the new cabinet, which includes many faces unfamiliar to the French.

Mr. Macron had wanted as broad a coalition as possible to secure stability, but Mr. Barnier struggled to lure moderate socialists into the cabinet. It includes only one left-wing figure, Didier Migaud, a former Socialist lawmaker and a former head of France’s official auditing institution, who was named justice minister.

Some right-wing heavyweights of previous governments kept their jobs: Rachida Dati, the culture minister, and Sébastien Lecornu, the defense minister.

But others departed.

Gérald Darmanin, the former interior minister, had coveted the foreign minister’s job to broaden his credentials for an eventual run for president in 2027, when Mr. Macron is term limited, but irked Mr. Barnier by saying that no tax increases would be acceptable.

Bruno Le Maire, the former economy and finance minister, is another potential presidential candidate, but, like many others, had been astounded and disillusioned by Mr. Macron’s abrupt decision to dissolve Parliament in June.

Jean-Noël Barrot, a centrist who was a junior minister in charge of European affairs, was promoted to foreign minister. The new economy and finance minister is Antoine Armand, a 33-year-old lawmaker for Mr. Macron’s party who led the lower house’s economic affairs committee but is not widely known.

The government led by Mr. Barnier, 73, a former European commissioner and foreign minister who has sought to distance himself from Mr. Macron, will face two crucial tests in the coming weeks.

Mr. Barnier must present his vision for France in a general policy speech that could be followed by no-confidence votes initiated by his opponents. The New Popular Front, an uneasy left-wing alliance ranging from the moderate Socialist Party to the hard-line France Unbowed, is still fuming that Mr. Macron refused to pick someone from its ranks to govern.

Left-wing demonstrators took to the streets of Paris and other cities on Saturday in protest over the new government, chanting, “What is the point of voting?”

“This government is not legitimate,” Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the leftist leader and founder of France Unbowed, told reporters at a protest in Marseille.

But the left’s own dogmatism and divisions played a large part in its failure to build on its strong showing in the election. Historically, it is only the moderate left — under Presidents François Mitterrand and François Hollande — that has forged enough consensus to be able to govern.

If the new government survives any no-confidence vote, it must rush to pass a budget by the end of the year. But agreeing on ways to cut spending and possibly raise taxes while avoiding widespread social protest is delicate.

Mr. Macron says that he will now govern more as an arbiter and guarantor of the Republic than as a top-down, all-directing leader, the role he has tended to play since taking office in 2017.

But tensions with Mr. Barnier have already flared, not least over Mr. Macron’s decision to name his former foreign minister, Stéphane Séjourné, as France’s commissioner to the European Union without consulting Mr. Barnier, who negotiated Brexit and considers European affairs to be his own field of expertise.

Friction has also been evident over what Mr. Macron’s centrists regard as a rightward lurch in the new government. One lawmaker aligned with Mr. Macron, Sophie Errante, even quit his centrist coalition in Parliament in protest on Friday.

Fourteen of the cabinet’s 39 members are from the Republicans or affiliated with the right, 19 are from centrist parties including Mr. Macron’s or affiliated with him; the rest, excluding Mr. Migaud, are either from smaller parties or not party-affiliated.

Economic policy will inevitably be contested. Mr. Macron is determined to preserve his business-friendly legacy. When leaks in the French news media suggested this past week that Mr. Barnier was considering a tax increase on the wealthy or on certain corporations, several of Mr. Macron’s allies reacted furiously.

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