François Bayrou is not happy and he makes it known. One more episode in the relationship, made of ups and downs, that he has had for seven years with Emmanuel Macron. “Without a deep agreement on the policy to follow, I could not agree to enter the government,” he told AFP on the evening of Wednesday February 7, before adding on Thursday morning franceinfo a salvo of criticism on the “drift” towards a “managerial technocracy” of the executive, according to him very far from the 2017 promise to “govern differently”.
“We are a full member of the majority,” however declared the historic ally of the President of the Republic, aware that a good part of the MoDem executives wish to continue the adventure, in particular the members of the government.
In any case, these statements disrupted the reshuffle. While the addition of around fifteen delegate ministers and secretaries of state was expected, it could ultimately be on a larger scale. With or without MoDem? Impossible to say at present, even if the relationship between François Bayrou and Emmanuel Macron has already seen others.
A look back at key moments in their shared history.
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In 2016, complicated beginnings
François Bayrou and Emmanuel Macron met for the first time on July 9, 2016 in Pau, during a stage of the Tour de France. The first was then mayor of Pau and was preparing to support Alain Juppé in the right-wing primary. The second is still François Hollande's Minister of the Economy.
The conversation is cordial, but we are far from love at first sight. On the contrary, François Bayrou is both suspicious and skeptical of this ambitious young man who has never yet taken part in any election. “There is an attempt which has already been made several times by several major financial interests and others, who are not content with having economic power, but who want to have political power,” asserts two months later the former triple presidential candidate (2002, 2007, 2012) on BFMTV.
“The social project which is that of Emmanuel Macron (...), we know it well, it is basically infinitely close to the one that Nicolas Sarkozy defended in 2007”, he adds, on September 11 on France Inter, stressing having “clashed with Nicolas Sarkozy in particular on growing inequalities, the justification on billionaires”.
February 2017, an alliance that allows victory
Alain Juppé beaten by François Fillon in the right-wing primary and Emmanuel Macron now a candidate, all eyes are on François Bayrou. The head of MoDem is tempted by a fourth candidacy in the presidential election, but he knows that the former minister is campaigning at the center and that the latter hopes for his support.
A rapprochement began in the fall through the mayor of Lyon at the time, Gérard Collomb, the first major socialist personality to support Emmanuel Macron. And on February 22, 2017, François Bayrou announced during a press conference at his party headquarters proposing an alliance to Emmanuel Macron.
“Never in the last 50 years has democracy in France experienced such a decomposed situation. This situation fuels the worst risk, an outbreak of the extreme right which poses the threat of immediate danger for our country and for Europe. Because the risk is immense, because the French are disoriented and often desperate, I decided to make Emmanuel Macron an offer of alliance. It is undoubtedly a gesture of self-sacrifice but it will be also, I believe, a gesture of hope for our country", he declared that day.
The two men agree to make probity, with a major law of moralization of political life, one of the major axes of Emmanuel Macron's candidacy. This is a turning point in the campaign. The centrist candidate takes several points in the polls and settles for good in the leading duo. He will be elected on May 7, 2017.
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Tense negotiations ahead of the legislative elections
However, the idyll experienced a first hitch when negotiating the list of candidates for the legislative elections in June 2017. The presentation of the candidates to the press on May 11 was delayed by several hours due to enormous anger from François Bayrou. , who has just discovered that the executives of En Marche have not respected the agreement he claims to have with the president: only around forty constituencies are then reserved for the MoDem instead of the approximately 140 which had been promised to him.
The tension is such that on May 14, in the middle of Emmanuel Macron's inauguration ceremony at the Élysée, François Bayrou and Richard Ferrand, then secretary general of En Marche, almost came to blows.
The dispute was resolved the next day: the MoDem finally obtained 80 constituencies. And on the evening of the second round of the legislative elections, June 18, 2017, 42 candidates from François Bayrou's party were elected deputies.
Minister of State for a short month and then leaves
François Bayrou entered the government on May 17, 2017 at Justice as Minister of State, a symbolic title which testifies to his importance within the presidential majority and his decisive role in the election of Emmanuel Macron.
But the new minister has barely time to launch his bill on the moralization of political life, since he announces on June 21 his departure from the government due to the preliminary investigation opened on June 9 by the Paris prosecutor's office. on the fictitious jobs of MoDem parliamentary assistants in the European Parliament – the Paris criminal court convicted the party and several MEPs last Monday, February 5, but acquitted François Bayrou for lack of evidence; the prosecution announced Thursday its intention to appeal the judgment.
It's the end of the state of grace for François Bayrou who then thought he would play a major role in Emmanuel Macron's five-year term, both by occupying the front of the media stage and by playing the role of close advisor to the leader. of State.
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An ally who always intends to weigh
Retired in his town of Pau, François Bayrou nevertheless continues to intervene in the public debate when he disagrees with Emmanuel Macron. He thus makes a different music heard on certain issues such as the increase in the CSG and the reform of the ISF. He also warned the President of the Republic at the start of the Yellow Vest crisis.
“At some point, we cannot govern against the people and from this point of view we must not add burdens to burdens,” he said on Europe 1 on November 30, 2018. “He cannot "There must be, in this first part of the 21st century, a political project which is not at the same time a project which takes into account social expectations", he adds.
Criticisms which annoy Prime Minister Édouard Philippe, whose government nevertheless includes two MoDem ministers with Jacqueline Gourault and Geneviève Darrieussecq.
High Commissioner for Planning and new support for Emmanuel Macron in 2022
François Bayrou was appointed High Commissioner for Planning in September 2020. A voluntary position which offers him a return to the national political scene. As such, he allows himself more or less regularly to give his opinion on the political decisions now taken by Jean Castex. In total, notes Le Monde, François Bayrou makes more than 35 media appearances during the year 2021 during which it is more a question of current affairs than of planning.
Logically, the boss of MoDem once again supports Emmanuel Macron during the 2022 presidential election. His party is even reinforced within the majority with 48 deputies elected in June and four members within the government of Élisabeth Borne, including Minister of Agriculture Marc Fesneau.
Appointed in September 2022 secretary general of the National Council for Refoundation (CNR), he resumed his habits as a current affairs commentator sending warnings to the head of state. “I am opposed to the passage by force” on the pension reform, he asserted in particular a few days later in Le Parisien.
A role that he continued to play until very recently. After having fought against the appointment of Catherine Vautrin to Matignon in the spring of 2022, it is also he who weighs with all his weight, at the beginning of January 2024, to prevent the appointment as Prime Minister of Sébastien Lecornu.
Does he now intend to criticize Emmanuel Macron's choices even more strongly until 2027? Does he see himself as a candidate for the presidential election in three years? “I have never renounced any of the duties that are mine,” he declared Thursday morning on franceinfo, judging that “the challenge of 2027 is precisely that we manage to reconcile France which fights at the bottom with France which decides at the top.
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