France‘s largest left-wing party, La France Insoumise (LFI), along with the Socialist Party (PS) and the French Communist Party (PCF), will table a no-confidence motion against Michel Barnier, who was recently appointed as the country’s new Prime Minister.
“We will table a no-confidence motion, and for good reason. I think our partners in the New People’s Front coalition will also do so,” Éric Coquerel, an LFI lawmaker, said in an interview with BFMTV.
The TV channel also reported, citing sources within the parties, that the French Communist Party would follow suit and table a no-confidence motion against Michel Barnier.
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Earlier on Thursday, 60 days after the extraordinary parliamentary elections, French President Emmanuel Macron appointed 73-year-old Michel Barnier as the new head of government. He will become the oldest politician to hold the position, succeeding the youngest Prime Minister of the Fifth Republic, 35-year-old Gabriel Attal.
A Republican, Barnier was first elected as a deputy in 1978. After 15 years in the National Assembly, he was appointed Minister of the Environment under François Mitterrand in 1993. From 1995, he worked as Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs for European Affairs under Jacques Chirac.
In 1999, he was elected to the European Parliament, where he focused on regional policy. In 2004, Chirac appointed him as Foreign Minister, a position he held for 14 months. Later, Barnier worked as Minister of Agriculture under Nicolas Sarkozy, then as a member of the European Parliament again, before becoming Vice President of the European Commission and Commissioner for Internal Market.
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In February 2015, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker appointed Barnier as a special advisor on defense and security issues. In the summer of 2016, Juncker put him in charge of negotiations on the United Kingdom’s exit from the EU.
More well-known in Brussels than in his home country, France, Barnier has earned the nickname “Mr. Brexit” and, due to his resemblance to the American President, “French Joe Biden.”
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Barnier is seen as a closed-off and conservative politician, sometimes even associated with far-right views. He has repeatedly advocated for limiting migration to the EU and even proposed a three-to-five-year moratorium on all migrant entries to the EU, except for asylum seekers and foreign students. Barnier has called for increasing the retirement age to 65 and extending the workday. In 2021, he announced his intention to run for president in the 2022 elections, but ultimately came third in the Republican Party congress after Éric Ciotti and Valérie Pécresse.
