PARIS: French President Emmanuel Macron has vowed to name a new prime minister this week to replace Michel Barnier, who was toppled by a no-confidence vote after just three months in office.
Even with Macron setting a deadline of Thursday for the appointment, there remained considerable uncertainty over who might emerge as the sixth head of government of Macron’s tenure.
Here, AFP looks at the names seen as the six most likely contenders.
But it is far from ruled out that another candidate could emerge. Barnier himself only came into contention at the last moment when he was named.
Francois Bayrou
A heavyweight politician who has been allied to Macron since he swept to power in the 2017 election campaign, Bayrou heads the MoDem party which is allied to, but not part of, Macron’s centrist force.
Bayrou, 73, was acquitted in February after a seven-year-long case over the fraudulent employment of parliamentary assistants by his party, opening up a potential return to government for the former justice minister.
His is currently regarded as the most likely candidate by commentators.
But Socialist Party leader Olivier Faure, whose forces could prove useful for Macron in ensuring the stability of the next government, said on Wednesday he opposed naming Bayrou as he would embody “continuity”.
Meanwhile Bayrou will also have to navigate hostility from the still-influential former right-wing French president Nicolas Sarkozy. According to one source, “the priority for Sarko is anyone but Bayrou”.
Sebastien Lecornu
The ultimate Macron loyalist, defence minister Lecornu was the only key minister to stay on from the previous government in the last cabinet reshuffle in September, a measure of the importance of his job in the third year of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
A career politician, Lecornu, still only 38, started out as a parliamentary assistant aged just 19. He has held ministerial posts ever since Macron came to power in 2017 and was promoted to defence minister in May 2022.
He has worked staunchly to keep up assistance for Ukraine, while carefully remaining in the shadows with infrequent media appearances.
Some French media, including BFM-TV, reported that Macron had been close to naming Lecornu in an address to the nation last Thursday but decided to take more time after some within the presidential camp said the minister was too right-wing.
Jean-Yves Le Drian
Le Drian, 77, was a heavyweight figure of Macron’s first term in office, serving as a powerful foreign minister between 2017 and 2022.
A former member of the Socialist Party, he also served as defence minister between 2012 and 2017 in the previous administration under Socialist president Francois Hollande. That makes him one of very few figures to straddle the two presidencies.
After leaving the foreign ministry he was named by Macron as his personal envoy for Lebanon but despite several visits made little progress towards ending the crisis there.
A proud naive of the western region of Brittany, Le Drian declined an offer to become prime minister, multiple sources told AFP, but some are still hoping to convince him.
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Bernard Cazeneuve
Former Socialist Party grandee Bernard Cazeneuve, 61, held the post of prime minister for less than half a year under Hollande’s presidency from 2016 to 2017.
Catherine Vautrin
A former member of the Republicans (LR) party of ex-president Nicolas Sarkozy, Vautrin, 64, harks from the right of French politics.
A long-serving head of the Reims area of eastern France, she has in recent years held several relatively short-lived ministerial posts including as labour minister. She is decentralisation minister in the outgoing government.
Francois Baroin
A former journalist whose political origins are very much on the right, Baroin, 59, was a spokesman and aide for ex-president Jacques Chirac and served as finance minister in 2011-2012.
Currently mayor of Troyes in the Champagne region, his personal life has long been a subject of interest in French media which has closely observed former relationships with the television presenter Marie Drucker and actor Michele Laroque.
