President Emmanuel Macron has appointed a new government led by Prime Minister Michel Barnier, his office said.
This action marks a shift to the right 11 weeks after the inconclusive parliamentary elections, AFP reported.
Barnier’s first major task, appointed just over two weeks ago, will be to present a budget plan for 2025 to tackle France’s financial situation, which the prime minister this week called “very serious”.
Conservative Barnier is best known internationally for leading the European Union’s Brexit negotiations with the United Kingdom.
Lately, he has had the difficult task of presenting for Macron’s approval a cabinet that has the best chance of surviving a vote of no confidence in parliament.
Opposition politicians from the left have already announced that they will challenge his government with a vote of no confidence.
In the July election, a left-wing bloc called the New People’s Front (NNP) won the most seats in parliament of any political bloc, but not enough to get an overall majority.
Macron argued that the left would not be able to muster enough support to form a government that would not be immediately ousted in parliament.
Instead, he turned to Barnier to head a government based mostly on parliamentary support from Macron’s allies, the conservative Republicans (LR) and centrist groups, while relying on a neutral position from the far right.
Among the new faces in key cabinet posts are Foreign Affairs Minister Jean-Noël Barro, a centrist, and conservative Bruno Retolo in the interior ministry, whose portfolio covers immigration.
Defense Minister Sébastien Lecorneau, a close ally of Macron, keeps his job.
The difficult task of presenting the budget plan to parliament next month falls to 33-year-old Antoine Armand, the new finance minister. Before that, he was the head of the parliamentary committee on economic affairs.
Even before the announcement, thousands of left-leaning people took to the streets of Paris and the southern port city of Marseille to protest.
They objected to the cabinet, which they said did not reflect the results of the parliamentary elections.
dnes.bg
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