New French prime minister's strategic approach to survival

Storm clouds have hovered over French politics for some time now but it was in the summer of last year that the thunder really began to roll, News.az reports citing Deutsche Welle.

In July, early parliamentary elections resulted in an unclear outcome because no single party won a clear majority. Three large political blocs eventually entered parliament in Paris, and the new government, appointed by French President Emmanuel Macron, was forced to govern without a majority to call its own.

This is how, in December, a vote of no confidence after motions were tabled by opposition parties on the left and far right, brought down Prime Minister Michel Barnier after he pushed through budget measures without parliamentary approval. Now his successor, Francois Bayrou, has inherited the difficult task of governing over a divided society and fragmented political landscape. Bayrou is head of the centrist Democratic Movement, known as MoDem, which is an important part of Macron's centrist alliance.

Still, Bayrou took that in his stride during his inauguration speech to French parliament on Tuesday afternoon. "84% of French people think that the government won't make it through the year," he said with a smile. "I sometimes even wonder where the other 16% get their optimism from."

Bayrou continued his speech by saying that the current, difficult political situation should be seen as an opportunity. "When everything seems to be so bad, the only recourse is courage," he argued. His speech touched on a wide variety of other topics, including hospitals in France, the country's high national debt, immigration, political party finances, agriculture and the majority voting system.

Controversial pension reform

The major focus though, was on another item — France's controversial pension reform, which is supposed to gradually increase the age of retirement from 62 to 64. Bayrou says he'll put the reform up for debate again and in doing this, he appears to be trying to win over the center-left Socialist Party, or PS.

Bayrou proposed that France's respected auditing court conduct a financial analysis of the current position of French pension funds, after which trade unions and employer associations would be given three months to work out a new pension reform proposal "behind closed doors."

All options should be on the table, Bayrou said, but the new "conclave" in charge of exploring pension reform would have to present a proposal that was financially balanced.

The PS had previously made stopping the pension reform one of the conditions for its support in parliament.

Prime Minister Bayrou is going a different route than his predecessor, the ill-fated Barnier, who reached out to the far right opposition in Parliament and made a lot of concessions to the National Rally, or RN, headed by Marine Le Pen.

This didn't really help him in the end, as in the December no-confidence vote, the RN voted against Barnier and helped to bring down his government.

The PS only has around 60 sitting members of parliament while the National Rally has just over double that many. But combined with votes from the centrist parties, the PS seats would be enough to prevent future no-confidence votes from succeeding.

News.Az