Over the weeks of the budget debate in the Assemblée Nationale, it became clear to both Emmanuel Macron and his supporters that Prime Minister Michel Barnier would not be following in the footsteps of the president, despite deriving his frail legitimacy from him. Contrary to what he may have hinted to the president at the time of his appointment in September, Barnier does not consider himself bound to the economic policy implemented by Macron since 2017.
In his draft budget for 2025, Barnier cast doubt on two of the fundamentals of "Macronomics": stable corporate and household taxes, and exemptions from employers' social security contributions. "On the economic front, a turning point has been reached," lamented Renaissance MP Charles Sitzenstuhl. "The government is now making companies pay again." While some lawmakers from Barnier's party, Les Républicains (LR), have criticized him for not breaking sufficiently from Macronism, calling these two fundamentals into question is considered heresy in the eyes of Macron's camp, which will quickly have the effect, they warn, of slowing growth and destroying employment.
Particularly as this course of action was not what had initially been agreed between the two heads of the executive branch. The day after the parliamentary elections, the former European commissioner discreetly exchanged views with Alexis Kohler, the president's chief of staff, at the Elysée. Whereas Xavier Bertrand and Bernard Cazeneuve, who were being considered for the role, showed their firmness in the face of a defeated president, the septuagenarian kept a low profile, suggesting that he would be an "aligned" prime minister.
His positioning in the 2021 LR presidential primary lent credibility to the thesis: On pensions, he advocated raising the legal retirement age to 65. On labor, he said he wanted to "encourage work and merit, to the detriment of handouts," notably by suspending unemployment benefits "after two refusals of a reasonable [job] offer." He was also in favor of lowering taxes, advocating, in particular, a reduction in production taxes ("A typically French anomaly that weighs down our companies," he said) and lowering social security costs on intermediate salaries. More than enough to reassure the president and his followers.
Macron, who made it clear the day after the legislative elections that the future government should not "undo what has been done," and that his record should be preserved, is not insensitive to this positioning. If he was reluctant to appoint Cazeneuve, it was because he feared that the former Socialist prime minister would challenge the pension reform. The decision of Socialists' leadership not to support the moderate Cazeneuve, which would have endangered their alliance with parties more to the left, gave the president an argument for dismissing him, without making the pensions issue a sticking point.
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