Michel Barnier never forgave Commission President Ursula von der Leyen for attending Emmanuel Macron’s ‘Renaissance European Campus’ in Bordeaux last year, arguing she had given the French leader undue political credit and support.

But he might be doing exactly the same thing now he has accepted the prime minister job. Is Barnier serving Macron’s interests?

I once met Barnier in Paris on a grey February morning in his Les Républicains (LR) office, a stone’s throw away from the National Assembly.

Euractiv had secured an interview with the man who, on Thursday, became the long-awaited prime minister, overseeing one of the most fragmented political scenes France has known in modern history.

The conversation touched on everything from EU elections to Brexit negotiations to party politics and, in the hour’s worth of exchange, the man often dubbed as serious and old-school relaxed in his chair and loosened up.

Until we got to European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen.

“Von der Leyen announced she would run for a second term. Does she have your support?” I asked.

A pause.

“The outgoing president of the European Commission, here in France, gave political guarantees to [Macron’s] party when she went to Bordeaux in October [2023],” he replied.

“We have a unique situation in France because von der Leyen went to give her support to a political list that is not ours. And she did not come to support our list”.

And that was that. All my other questions were met with “it is down to the party to decide.”

It was the faux-pas she should never have made and which senior LR party leaders still consider as no less than a stab in the back: Von der Leyen, whose conservative CDU is the sister party to LR in the European EPP family, attended the Renaissance European Campus, a gathering of pro-Macron forces and Renew group members, in October last year.

The speech she gave there was a series of compliments to the European centre. “You are Europe,” she told attendees, praising Macron’s movement Renaissance “for having Europe at heart” and the French Presidency of the Council of the EU for being so proactive and successful.

She had one other, subtle aim in mind: to send the right message to Emmanuel Macron himself—who was not in attendance—to secure his support for a second term in office at the Commission.

The EPP’s LR faction was so mad with the move that they voted against her nomination at the EPP Congress in Bucharest and again in July, where she secured her re-election.

And von der Leyen’s congratulatory post on X on Thursday will probably not change a thing.

“Giving political guarantees” and throwing support behind Emmanuel Macron: here’s one thing Barnier always said he would never do.

“June 10th [the day after EU elections] will be the first day of the end of Macron,” he told me later in our conversation, insisting that his eyes were on “preparing 2027” when the next Presidential elections are due to take place and define the contours of a “political alternative for the right and the centre” – with Macron gone.

Fast forward to September, and he is tasked to build a coalition government with a broken centre, his own party in disarray, and whose only survival is dependent on the goodwill of the far-right.

LR went from 112 seats in 2017 to 62 in 2022. After this summer’s snap legislative elections, the party reached a historic low, with a mere 47 seats – putting the new prime minister in a particularly weak spot.

His policy priorities, which have yet to be defined, may be slightly different to those of Macron, but it will not bring the significant changes millions of voters asked for in the polls.

This might even embolden Macron, who will have to worry less about domestic squabbles and focus again on what he’s good at: EU and international affairs.

Many are already accusing Barnier of falling into Macron’s trap and being no more than his right-hand man, appointed to carry on the president’s legacy (with tweaks).

Barnier might just have done precisely what he blamed von der Leyen for doing last year in Bordeaux: giving Macron “political guarantees”

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The Roundup

Google’s anti-competitive advertising practices are harming UK publishers and advertisers, the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) found on Friday (6 September), amid similar investigations in the EU and US over the company’s monopolistic behaviour in search and ad markets.

The election of former European commissioner and Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier has caused a stir in France but has been met with more measured reactions abroad, where he is no stranger – even if this meant overlooking his more recent Eurosceptic stances.

News over the European Commission looking for a lead scientific adviser for the Artificial Intelligence (AI) internally was met with some controversy this week.

Boosting demand for green steel by mandating minimum quotas for carmakers is not the right way to decarbonise steel production, automotive associations said, while environmentalists consider the sector to be “uniquely placed” to work as a lead market for green steel.

Look out for…

• Heinrich Böll Stiftung, the policy think tank for the German Greens, is organising a conference on After the 2024 European elections: The future of the EU institutions and green priorities.
• Informal meeting of EU agriculture and fisheries ministers, 8-10 September 2024, in Budapest, Hungary.