French PM pledges to form a government ‘before Christmas’

PARIS — French Prime Minister François Bayrou wants to know who is in and who is out.

After days of meetings with party leaders, Bayrou has set a deadline of Friday for each of them to tell him whether they want to join his government, tacitly back it, or topple it.

“The government must be presented during the weekend, at any rate before Christmas,” Bayrou said in an interview with France 2 on Thursday evening.

One week after he was appointed, the new prime minister is still trying to convince French parties to support the coalition government he is trying to form.

So far, apart from French President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist bloc, Bayrou might be able to count on the support of the right-wing Les Républicains, who are inclined to support him under certain conditions.

But he still falls short of a majority to rule the country or, at least, to pass a long-overdue budget for 2025. He needs some tacit support from either Marine Le Pen’s far-right party or part of the pan-left alliance for that.

To avoid the fate of his predecessor Michel Barnier, whose government only lasted three months, Bayrou has tried to extend an olive branch to opposition parties to convince them not to topple him.

On Thursday Bayrou promised to review Macron’s controversial pensions reform, which extended the legal retirement age from 62 to 64 years and is in the crosshairs of opposition parties spanning from the far-right National Rally to the pan-left New Popular Front coalition. He however ruled out withdrawing that reform.

He also promised to limit Article 49.3 of the French constitution, a constitutional backdoor to pass legislation without a parliamentary vote, unless there is a total deadlock in a crucial vote such as the one on budget.

Macron appointed Bayrou last Friday after the National Rally and the New Popular Front coalition joined forces to topple Michel Barnier’s government earlier this month.

As a result, Barnier’s budget for 2025 was also rejected, leaving France without a budget law just a few days before an end-of-year deadline.

Bayrou on Thursday said he hoped the French parliament would adopt a new budget by mid-February next year. Financial markets and the European Commission are closely watching France’s efforts to reduce its massive deficit, which this year reached 6.2 percent of the country’s GDP, more than twice the level permitted under EU rules.

In the meantime, this week the country adopted a stopgap budget to avoid a U.S.-style shutdown.