After 51 days of deliberating, French President Emmanuel Macron finally appointed the ex-Brexit negotiator, Michel Barnier, from the right-wing Les Républicains to the role of prime minister on Thursday.
The decision immediately sparked outcry amongst the left-wing opposition, leading to renewed calls for protests on Saturday, September 7th.
?⚡️ 51 jours après la victoire du NFP, Macron nomme Michel Barnier, un sarkozyste dont le parti a perdu les élections législatives.
— La France Insoumise #NFP à l'Assemblée (@FiAssemblee) September 5, 2024
Donc contre ce coup de force :
✅ Censure du Premier Ministre
✅ Mobilisation samedi 7 septembre
✅ Destitution de ce Président hors-sol.
Signez… pic.twitter.com/PQ4FyiNVvE
Where will there be protests?
So far, there are 133 planned across France.
- Paris (2pm at Place de la Bastille)
- Lille (6.30pm at Place de la République)
- Rennes (3pm at Place Charles de Gaulle)
- Strasbourg (2.30pm at Place Kléber)
- Bordeaux (11am at Place de la Victoire)
- Marseille (2pm at Porte d’Aix)
- Toulouse (4pm at Métro Jean Jaurès)
- Lyon (3pm at Place Bellecour)
- Montpellier (6pm in front of the Préfecture)
There will also be several rallies taking place abroad, including demonstrations planned in London, Berlin and Montreal in front of local French consulates.
You can find the full list of protests scheduled for Saturday on the LFI website.
Why call for protests?
Left-wing political leaders like Jean-Luc Melenchon, head of La France Insoumise (LFI), said that Macron naming Barnier meant the election had been "stolen from the French".
READ MORE: Can French President Emmanuel Macron really be impeached?
While leader of the Parti Socialiste, Olivier Faure, denounced Macron's choice as a "democratic betrayal", adding "the French people who voted to put NFP in the lead in parliament, but [he] chooses a prime minister from a party that got six percent of the vote".
Initially, Saturday's protest was called by the left-wing party, La France Insoumise, to push back against Macron's delay in choosing a prime minister and his rejection of the NFP candidate, Lucie Castets.
Others, including the Green and Communist parties, as well as several youth organisations, have joined in the call for mobilisations.
However, the centre-left Parti Socialiste (the fourth member of the left-wing coalition, Nouveau Front Populaire) has declined to call for mobilisation.
In the July snap parliamentary election, the left-wing coalition (Nouveau Front Populaire, or NFP) took home the largest number of seats in parliament (193), followed by the Macron's centrist alliance (164), the far-right Rassemblement National (143), and Les Républicains (47).
No group or party secured an absolute majority, creating a hung parliament. In the eyes of NFP, the left-wing should have been called upon to choose a prime minister, due to their position as the largest group in parliament.
However, Macron rejected this claim, arguing in favour of a 'broader coalition'. He then refused the NFP candidate, economist Lucie Castets, arguing she would not survive a confidence vote.
As for Barnier, 73, he previously served as the European Union’s Brexit negotiator, and now holds the record as the oldest Prime Minister in the history of modern France, succeeding Gabriel Attal, who – at 35 – had been the youngest.
READ MORE: What you should know about Michel Barnier and how he'd like to change France
The veteran right-wing politician has held a collection of top jobs as minister, European Union commissioner and negotiator on Brexit during a half-century political career that has seen him tack further to the right in recent years – and his longevity earned him the ‘French Joe Biden’ epithet.
Barnier also served as a minister under the right-wing administrations of presidents Jacques Chirac and Nicolas Sarkozy.
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