New French PM Michel Barnier will give “some much-needed ballast to France’s somewhat unstable leadership”.
That is the view of a former vice president of the European parliament.
Edward McMillan-Scott was speaking to this website after Barnier’s appointment on Thursday.
Known in France as Monsieur Brexit, Barnier, who is 73, is France’s oldest prime minister since the Fifth Republic came into being in 1958.
After two months of political chaos following snap elections, French President Emmanuel Macron on Thursday named Barnier as the new prime minister, replacing Gabriel Attal.
He is the EU’s former chief Brexit negotiator and now faces a tough challenge of guiding tough legislation, including the budget, through a hung parliament while under constant threat of being ousted.
President Macron had interviewed several potential candidates for the role of prime minister but finally settled on Barnier, a former MEP with the centre right European People’s Party.
It took President Macron 60 days to make a decision on choosing a prime minister, having called a “political truce” during the Paris Olympics.
In his farewell speech outside Hôtel Matignon, Gabriel Attal said “French politics is sick, but a cure is possible, provided that we all agree to move away from sectarianism”.
Barnier is well known for taking charge of the marathon discussions on the UK’s exit from the European Union between 2016 and 2019.
Behind the scenes, his chief task was to travel around Europe and build consensus among the 27 member states to ensure the EU maintained a united front.
The veteran politician, who is also a former EU commissioner, has considerable experience of political deadlock. He has had a long political career in France as well as the EU and has long been part of the right-wing Republicans (LR) party.
McMillan-Scott, a former veteran UK MEP, told this site, “Michel Barnier is a highly competent, patient and popular politician, who will add some much-needed ballast to France’s somewhat unstable leadership.”
McMillan-Scott, the last UK Vice-President of the European Parliament, now coordinates the largest pro-EU forum in the UK.
Further reaction to the move came from Dr Denis MacShane, a former Europe Minister in the UK.
He told this site on Friday, “Michel Barnier believes in General de Gaulle’s core idea that that politicians should serve the state not the other way round.”
“He is a get things done politician who has worked across the aisle with different political groups and is a consensus builder.”
“The question now is whether the far left headed by the Trotskyist Jean Luc Mélenchon and the extreme right wing headed by Marine Le Pen will fuse into a rejectionist bloc and deny France any chance of having a working Parliament that can pass laws,” said MacShane who knows Barnier well and worked with him in Tony Blair’s government when Barnier was France’s foreign minister and later during the UK’s Brexit years.
David Davis, who worked closely with Mr Barnier for several years as the UK’s Brexit Secretary, told the BBC he was a really solid Frenchman who was well-grounded in the real France.
