PARIS (Reuters) – French President Emmanuel Macron searched on Thursday for a new prime minister to replace Michel Barnier, who officially resigned a day after opposition lawmakers voted to topple his government.
Here are some of the possible candidates whose names are circulating in political circles and in French media:
SEBASTIEN LECORNU
Sebastian Lecornu defected from the centre-right The Republicans party and rallied behind Macron’s 2017 presidency, going on to become one of the president’s staunchest allies.
He joined Macron’s government alongside Bruno Le Maire, Macron’s long-serving finance minister, and former interior minister Gerald Darmanin who had also both defected from the conservatives.
Lecornu, 38, most recently served as defence minister in Barnier’s outgoing government, overseeing increases in defence spending and France’s support of military aid to Ukraine.
Investigative news website Mediapart and newspaper Liberation reported that Lecornu had dined earlier in the year with Macron’s arch-rival, Marine Le Pen of the far-right National Rally (RN), and they had discussed the war in Ukraine. Lecornu denied the encounter.
FRANCOIS BAYROU
Francois Bayrou, 73, is a centrist veteran whose Democratic Movement (MoDem) party has been a part of Macron’s ruling alliance since 2017.
Bayrou, a longtime mayor of the south-western town of Pau who has made his rural roots central to his political identity, decided against running a fourth presidential race in 2017, instead rallying behind Macron.
Macron appointed Bayrou as justice minister but he resigned only weeks later amid an investigation into his party’s alleged fraudulent employment of parliamentary assistants.
He was cleared of fraud charges this year.
BERNARD CAZENEUVE
Bernard Cazeneuve was a senior member of the Socialist Party before he quit in 2022 in anger over the party’s decision to form an electoral pact with the hard-left France Unbowed (LFI).
Cazeneuve, 61, served as prime minister during the final months of socialist Francois Hollande’s presidency. Before that, he was interior minister, in charge of security during the Charlie Hebdo attack and the Islamist militant assault in Paris on Nov. 13, 2015.
The choice of Cazeneuve would be designed to encourage Socialist lawmakers to move away from the alliance with LFI, Greens and Communists and to expand a centrist ruling group.
His name had also circulated in the summer as Macron sought a prime minister following an inconclusive snap election that delivered the current fractured parliament. In the end, he was passed over for Barnier.
XAVIER BERTRAND
Xavier Bertrand, 59, is a centre-right politician who heads the northern de-industrialised region of Hauts de France, where Macron has sought to develop an ecosystem around electric vehicle batteries.
Bertrand served as a minister under the conservative presidencies of Jacques Chirac and Nicolas Sarkozy and took part in the Republicans’ primary contest ahead of the 2022 presidential election.
Bertrand, a former insurance salesman once nicknamed “floc floc” for the sound his rubber-soled shoes made on parliament’s stone floor, was also among the names Macron considered in the summer for the role of prime minister.
FRANCOIS BAROIN
Francois Baroin, 59, is a centre-right career politician, whose father was a student friend of the late President Chirac.
He served briefly as finance minister, following a stint as budget minister, at the height of Europe’s sovereign debt crisis in 2011-2012. He was named chairman of Barclays France in 2022.
Baroin has been mayor of Troyes in Champagne since 1995
(Editing by Richard Lough)
