{"id":13693,"date":"2024-12-24T00:15:46","date_gmt":"2024-12-24T00:15:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/zoominfinancial.com\/?p=13693"},"modified":"2024-12-24T00:15:47","modified_gmt":"2024-12-24T00:15:47","slug":"frances-new-premier-selects-eric-lombard-as-finance-minister","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zoominfinancial.com\/?p=13693","title":{"rendered":"France\u2019s new premier selects Eric Lombard as finance minister"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>Unlock the Editor\u2019s Digest for free<\/p>\n<p class=\"article__content-sign-up-topic-description\"><span>Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><iframe class=\"article__content-sign-up-iframe close\" scrolling=\"no\" id=\"signUpIframe\" data-prev-url=\"\/register\/in-article-sign-up?ft-content-uuid=84930dc8-b409-41e9-9d95-ddb4d6753f8c\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<div id=\"article-body\">\n<p>France\u2019s new prime minister Fran\u00e7ois Bayrou has selected Eric Lombard, head of state-backed financial group Caisse des D\u00e9p\u00f4ts, as finance minister, handing him the key role of trying to enact a budget for next year.<\/p>\n<p>Lombard will be tasked with coming up with a taxation and spending plan for 2025 that can be approved by France\u2019s raucous hung parliament, while also starting to repairs the country\u2019s degraded public finances.<\/p>\n<p>Bayrou\u2019s predecessor, Michel Barnier, was ousted by the National Assembly in a vote of no confidence earlier this month because of opposition from leftwing and far-right political parties to his deficit-cutting budget. <\/p>\n<p>On Monday Bayrou set the ambitious goal of trying to get as close as possible to Barnier\u2019s target of reducing France\u2019s deficit to 5 per cent of GDP by the end of 2025, down from more than 6 per cent this year. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cI think we need to find something around 5 [per cent of GDP], a little more than 5, that will enable us to reach an agreement and strike a balance,\u201d he told BFM TV. <\/p>\n<p>Bayrou said \u201cthe priority should be on cutting unproductive public spending\u201d, adding that companies could be asked to pay higher taxes for a \u201ctemporary period\u201d. <\/p>\n<p>Members of Bayrou\u2019s cabinet were unveiled on Monday after days of wrangling between him and President Emmanuel Macron, who officially names the ministers after recommendations from the premier.<\/p>\n<p>Macron and Bayrou are under pressure to end political turmoil in France by creating a government that can survive and pass crucial measures in the divided parliament. <\/p>\n<p>France is on its fourth prime minister this year, an unprecedented level of churn in France\u2019s Fifth Republic, which was founded in 1958.\u00a0 <\/p>\n<p>Barnier\u2019s administration only lasted three months, making him the shortest-serving premier.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Brussels and financial markets have been scrutinising France to see if it can begin to reduce its deficit, which is far above the EU limit of 3 per cent of GDP.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"n-content-image n-content-image--full\" data-component=\"image-set\"><picture><source media=\"(min-width: 700px)\"  width=\"1889\" height=\"1260\"><\/source><\/picture><figcaption class=\"n-content-picture__caption\"><span>French Prime Minister Francois Bayrou, right, on Monday with interior minister Bruno Retailleau, who keeps his position in the cabinet<\/span><span> <!-- -->\u00a9 AP<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Bayrou, who leads the small MoDem party that has been allied with Macron\u2019s centrist bloc in parliament since 2017, does not have enough votes to pass a budget. <\/p>\n<p>If Bayrou seeks to override lawmakers and invoke a clause in France\u2019s constitution to pass the budget, as Barnier did, he will be vulnerable to a no-confidence vote. <\/p>\n<p>A stop-gap emergency budget was approved by parliament last week to avoid a shutdown of government services in January.<\/p>\n<p>Lombard, a 66-year-old former banker and technocrat, has led Caisse des D\u00e9p\u00f4ts since Macron in 2017 selected him to run the group, which makes investments in public housing, infrastructure and green projects. <\/p>\n<p>On defence and international diplomacy, which are considered the domain of the president and not the prime minister, Macron has chosen continuity by keeping on loyalist S\u00e9bastien Lecornu as minister of the armies and Jean-No\u00ebl Barrot as minister of foreign affairs. Both served in Barnier\u2019s government.<\/p>\n<p>Roughly half the ministers in Barnier\u2019s administration have been retained in the same briefs by Bayrou.<\/p>\n<p>Among them is Bruno Retailleau, a rightwinger who made his mark as interior minister with tough talk on immigration and crime. <\/p>\n<p>Former premier \u00c9lisabeth Borne, also from Macron\u2019s centrist camp, will return as education minister. <\/p>\n<p>The political turmoil in France began when Macron called early parliamentary elections in June, only to lose and usher in a more fractured National Assembly.<\/p>\n<p>Marine Le Pen\u2019s far-right Rassemblement National plus a leftist bloc made up of the far-left France Unbowed, Socialists, Communists and Greens voted to oust Barnier as premier. <\/p>\n<p>Le Pen, whose party is the biggest in the National Assembly, sealed Barnier\u2019s fate when she rejected concessions on his proposed budget.<\/p>\n<p>To try to avoid being beholden to Rassemblement National, Bayrou sought to win over moderate leftwing lawmakers by offering concessions and posts in what he said would be a national unity government.<\/p>\n<p>Although the Socialists, Greens and Communists initially seemed open to such a deal, they subsequently decided Bayrou was not offering enough, and none joined his government.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis is not a government but a provocation,\u201d said Socialist party chief Olivier Faure.<\/p>\n<p>In a sign of how Rassemblement National still holds sway, Bayrou was forced to abandon the nomination of Xavier Bertrand, a rightwing politician and longtime adversary of Le Pen, as justice minister. She signalled his presence in Bayrou\u2019s government would displease her party.<\/p>\n<p>Bayrou instead picked G\u00e9rald Darmanin, a Macron ally and former interior minister, to be justice minister. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe failure to come to terms with the left places this government in the same fragile position as the previous one,\u201d said Chlo\u00e9 Morin, political analyst and author. <strong><br \/><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>Read the full article <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ft.com\/content\/84930dc8-b409-41e9-9d95-ddb4d6753f8c\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" rel=\"nofollow\">here<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Unlock the Editor\u2019s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. France\u2019s new&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13694,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-13693","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business"},"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.3 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>France\u2019s new premier selects Eric Lombard as finance minister | ZoomInFinancial<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Unlock the Editor\u2019s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.France\u2019s new prime minister\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" 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