French President Emmanuel Macron has picked François Bayrou to be France’s prime minister, the Elysée said in a statement.

Bayrou, a longtime figure of French centrist politics, and one of Macron’s earliest supporters, was long seen as front runner after lawmakers from the far right and left united to torpedo Michel Barnier’s government last week.

Bayrou and Macron met for nearly two hours Friday morning. French media initially reported that the meeting was tense and Bayrou’s odds of getting the job had diminished.

The choice appeared to be one that was debated until the last minute. Macron missed a self-imposed deadline to name a new premier by Thursday, after which his office told reporters that a new prime minister would be named Friday morning. The statement from the Elysée was emailed to reporters shortly before 1 p.m. in Paris.

Macron’s decision came so late that employees at the Matignon palace, the residency of the French prime minister, had rolled out the red carpet but could not determine what height they should set up the new PM’s microphone for the official transfer ceremony later in the day, a journalist on the scene from Agence France Presse said on X. 

Barnier’s administration was toppled last week after trying to pass a slimmed-down social security budget to rein in France’s massive deficit.

However, it’s unclear how the 73-year-old will be able to avoid the same fate as Barnier, as France’s legislature remains fractured between three groups three roughly equal blocks — left-wing, center-right and far-right — who have so far not shown little willingness to work together. 

Barnier attempted to thread that needle and keep his government afloat by securing the tacit support of Marine Le Pen’s National Rally, which worked for a time. The far-right party wielded an unprecedented amount of influence in policymaking and secured some key concessions in budget negotiations, but Le Pen eventually withdrew her party’s support for Barnier’s government over his budget plans.

Bayrou’s immediate challenge will be to form a government that isn’t immediately taken down by the opposition in parliament, especially considering it is unlikely to include ministers from outside the narrow coalition of pro-Macron and conservative MPs of the previous cabinet.

The hard-left France Unbowed has vowed to bring forward a no-confidence motion against Bayrou, while National Rally President Jordan Bardella called on the new premier to engage with opposition parties.

However, Bardella said that Bayrou held “no democratic legitimacy or majority” and that the party’s red lines which brought down Barnier had not changed.

Politico

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