French left vows no-confidence vote on ‘undemocratic’ Macron choice for PM

French president Emmanuel Macron appointed the EU’s former Brexit negotiator, Michel Barnier, as prime minister of France in a bid to form “a unifying government in the service of the country” within two months.

But the deadlock might not be broken after the far-right National Rally’s Marine Le Pen said her party will not participate in a government led by Barnier.

Left wing parties which won the French snap legislative elections called by Macron after the far-fight’s victory in the European elections of June, criticised Barnier’s appointment, paving the way for a no-confidence motion.

The hard-left France Insoumise’s Jean-Luc Mélenchon said the election had been “stolen” from the French people.

The left alliance won the largest number of seats in the new parliament but fell short of an absolute majority, and called Barnier’s appointment “undemocratic”. Many on the left point out that in 1981 he voted against the decriminalisation of homosexuality.

The Socialist party leader, Olivier Faure, part of the left-wing coalition that won the highest number of seats in the election, said it was a “denial of democracy” for Macron to appoint a prime minister from the party that came fourth. “We’re entering a crisis of regime,” Faure said.

Senior European figures congratulated Barnier, who is well-known on the international stage.

Controversially, Macron appears to be counting on Le Pen’s National Rally to keep Barnier in power by voting against a no-confidence motion. The RN indicated on Thursday it would not automatically vote down Barnier and would wait and see what sort of programme he laid out in his first address to parliament.

Barnier, 73, was known for almost 50 years in right-wing French politics as a centrist, liberal-minded neo-Gaullist, devoted to the European cause. But in 2021, he stunned observers by significantly lurching right and hardening his stance on immigration and security as part of an unsuccessful bid to become presidential candidate for the right against Macron in 2022.

During a summer of political stalemate, Macron took weeks to begin to acknowledge that he had lost the snap election. His centrist party lost seats and went from its position as the largest grouping in parliament to the second grouping, behind the left alliance.

After the July election deprived Macron of his relative majority in parliament, the centrist president drew out the appointment of a new prime minister for a period unprecedented since WWII, through the July-August Olympic Games and beyond.

Michel Barnier faces his toughest challenge yet as France’s new prime minister amid the country’s biggest political crisis in decades.

While Marine Le Pen’s far right said they will hold fire and judge him on his programme first, two far-right MPs recently described Barnier, now France’s oldest premier in modern history, as a Jurassic Park-style “fossil” and a “French Joe Biden” who constantly changes his mind.

Another far-right MP said Barnier, who served as a minister long ago under the right’s Jacques Chirac and Nicolas Sarkozy, had been “brought out of mothballs”.

Against a backdrop of political rivalry, there is an urgency to Barnier’s appointment, announced on Thursday by Emmanuel Macron after nearly two months of political deadlock. Time is running out to prepare the 2025 budget amid fears of austerity measures and deficit clashes with the EU.

Barnier, although seen as Macron-compatible, has been critical of the president in recent times, questioning the president’s decision to call a “risky” June snap election and calling his top-down way of running the country “solitary” and “arrogant”.

In 2022, when Macron’s centrists lost their absolute majority in parliament but remained the biggest force, Barnier said “Macronism” was on its last legs.

In 2022, after Macron was elected for a second term as president, Barnier called on the centrists to “move from a culture of arrogance to a culture of compromise”.