Where is France Heading?

France’s new Prime Minister François Bayrou is known as a true centrist who for decades has emphasized the importance of gathering stable majorities as well as not succumbing to the simplistic messages of extreme parties. Therefore, it is logical that just now he finally got to become prime minister, given the very unclear political situation that prevails in the country. The question, however, is what he can do and where France is aheading politically.

In France there are three distinct political blocs. We have the far right with the National Rally as the major dominant party. We can also count parts of the traditional Gaullist right there even if they do not cooperate formally. Then we have the liberal center, with Macron’s support parties and parts of the old right. And finally, we have the red-green left where La France insoumise led by the left populist Jean-Luc Mélenchon is the biggest force.

When President Emanuel Macron unexpectedly dissolved the National Assembly last year and called new elections, many believed that the National Rally and their allies would gain a majority in parliament. But it appeared in the second round of elections that the opposition to National Rally is still so strong among all those who do not yet vote for the party that they voted for any candidate in their constituencies who had a chance to win over the candidate from National Rally.

Many on the left then hoped for a government with a clear left-wing profile, but centrist Emmanuel Macron (who appoints the prime minister) has persisted in creating governments that are based on a center-right policy rather than a left-wing policy. The first government he appointed after the parliamentary elections in the summer was led by Michel Barnier. He had to resign after a motion of no confidence against him and his government was passed in parliament on 4 December.

When Macron then needed a new prime minister, he finally turned to the old centrist François Bayrou. And once again the left got to see a government with a clear centre-right profile. Fourteen of the cabinet members come from the president’s own political camp. Seven come from the traditional right-wing party, the Republicans. Four people have no political color, two come from François Bayrou’s own center group Modem, two from the Horizon group, two from the center-right UDI party, and only two from the left.

Bayrou’s candidacy was supported by the entire Macron bloc. He was rejected by La France insoumise while the other left parties and all the right parties accepted him and announced that they would give him a chance and see what policy the new government would pursue.

In other words, we have a situation where the French parliament is accepting central governments because it knows that the country actually needs to be governed, but where the governments also find it very difficult to actually achieve anything.

In a long interview that the TV channel LCI did on January 27 with François Bayrou, it becomes clear what problems the French government is facing. The will to rule is not lacking. The Prime Minister says he wants to rule France and unite France. However, the question is how it can be done.

On a direct question, Bayrou explains that he does not want to proceed with the proposal that came from the previous government to lay off 4,000 teachers. This new announcement clearly appears as a concession to the political left, and to the teaching profession, of course. But Bayrou also says he wants to strengthen the defense, the judiciary and the police. This is, of course, a policy that pleases the right. Both left-wing and right-wing voters must therefore be satisfied.

It is a well-known problem that France likes to let the public sector grow. France is a country with high taxes and a large public sector. According to some, you have a rigid and oversized bureaucracy. And at the same time, the combative French find it difficult to accept cuts in public spending.

Here Bayrou says in the interview that he wants to reduce the number of civil servants. But since the French rarely accept that kind of change without starting to argue and call strikes, the reduction must mainly take place through natural retirements. He also wants to reduce unnecessary bureaucracy. That always sounds good, but concretely it means that people will be dismissed from their jobs.

Right-wing politician Nicolas Sarkozy, who ruled France between 2007 and 2012, tried to modernize the French economy. He cut some taxes, he improved the conditions for entrepreneurs and he tried to implement a pension reform. However, his reform work was disrupted by the international financial crisis we had in 2008. The standard of living of the French fell. The French government had to take on debt due to sharply declining tax revenues. Sarkozy’s presidency was also marred by corruption allegations and in the 2012 election, Sarkozy lost to Socialist François Hollande.

But now the centrist politician François Bayrou seems to want to follow in Sarkozy’s footsteps. And that applies, among other things, to pensions. The costs of the pensions simply do not add up. The problem is not only that the French retire early, but also that in France, just like in the rest of Europe, too few children are born while people are living longer. – We can no longer have it like this, says Bayrou in the interview, that fewer and fewer must support more and more.

But then the question also becomes whether the immigration, which is now so hotly debated in France, can solve the question of the regrowth of the French population.

Bayrou is a centrist politician, and he has always been careful to mark his distance from the immigration-critical National Rally. But now he says in the interview that the question of immigration is a question of proportions. Of course, a country like France can have immigration, but there must be reasonable proportions. – Whether we have three or thirty percent immigrants in France means everything for how we should look at immigration, he says. And to a direct question from the journalist, Bayrou says that many French people today have the feeling of being overwhelmed (“submergé”) by immigration and that France has abandoned reasonable proportions a long time ago. – But have we reached the point where it is no longer reasonable to accept more people? asks the journalist. François Bayrou states that this is actually the case.

From all this, one could think that the way forward for the French center and the traditional right would be to initiate a collaboration with the large nationalist party. Just as has been done in, for example, Sweden or Italy, the center and the traditional right would give up their opposition to right-wing nationalism and establish a fruitful collaboration where they take responsibility for the economy and growth as well as immigration and the nation. But when Bayrou is asked if he would consider governing with the National Rally, the answer is still no. And it is, says Bayrou, about ideas and values. The journalist points out that it works in Italy and the Netherlands, but Bayrou shakes his head and says no.

Here, however, the question is whether the French center and the traditional right do not need to rethink. How can the state be made more efficient and the economy more dynamic together with socialists? How can the French center and the traditional right create a responsible policy around migration, French identity and culture, with a left that is characterized by self-hatred and oikophobia? It is strange how the French political landscape so consistently refuses to let the National Assembly into power. The result will only be that the party continues to grow.

If France wants to be part of the right-wing wave that is now sweeping the West, where our traditional European values ​​such as entrepreneurship and cultural conservatism are once again celebrated, the part of the French establishment that considers itself non-socialist must probably start looking towards the nationalist right. Not to give them sole power. But to integrate them into a necessary social project that moves the country away from economic stagnation and cultural polarization.