Already, the first signs of a challenge were present. At the handover ceremony on the steps of the prime minister's office, on Friday, December 13, newly appointed Prime Minister François Bayrou, 73, with a serious look about him, declared, alongside his predecessor Michel Barnier, that he was "well aware of the Himalaya that lies ahead, of the difficulties of every kind." The image of a rough ascent seems entirely apt to describe the centrist's first days in office, which have been marked by a series of crises and pressing emergencies.

The looming specter of a financial and economic crisis, for one, with the credit rating agency Moody's downgrading France's credit rating just hours after Bayrou's appointment. Or the climate crisis and humanitarian catastrophe, with the devastating cyclone Chido sweeping over the French overseas department of Mayotte, on Saturday, December 14, leaving France's poorest department in a state of desolation. The death toll there could run into the "hundreds or thousands," according to the local prefect.

Bayrou, meanwhile, was 8,000 kilometers away from the cataclysm, busy with the preliminary negotiations needed to form his "general interest government." A "tightened" team whose "priority will be the budget," as requested by President Emmanuel Macron in his December 5 speech. Speaking to the newspaper La Tribune Dimanche on December 15, Bayrou, the leader of the centrist MoDem party, maintained that "his prime vocation is to be a builder and, failing that, a repairer."

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