Emmanuel Macron wants to try again. By tapping François Bayrou as prime minister on Friday, France’s president hopes to retain power via a shaky governing coalition between the Macronists and the center-right Républicains. And as with the outgoing premier Michel Barnier (of Les Républicains), whose government was toppled in a December 4 no-confidence vote, Bayrou’s nomination has the president leaning once more on an older generation of the political establishment.

Arguably, the seventy-three-year-old Bayrou was the original Macron, running for the presidency in 2002, 2007, and 2012 as leader of a centrist formation in competition with mainline conservatives. Since Macron’s election in 2017, Bayrou’s Mouvement Démocrate (MoDem) party has been an important ally — a relationship that has not been without its frictions. Minutes before the nomination was made official at around noon on Friday, the headline story was that Bayrou would not be selected as premier, the subject of purportedly tense exchanges that same morning between the pair.

What information emerges of Friday morning’s arm-twisting between the president and his new premier will surely provide interesting detail on the crisis gripping the president’s camp. Macron is characteristically determined to keep his hand on the political situation, despite the defeat suffered by his coalition in this summer’s snap parliamentary elections. Meanwhile, Macron’s eroding authority has freed longtime allies to jockey more aggressively for places and positions as an internal succession fight picks up speed.

Publicly, Bayrou is presenting himself as a stable hand. At the Friday evening transfer of power with Barnier, Bayrou promised to work toward a “necessary reconciliation” for a country in crisis and pledged to “confront” France’s public deficit, expected to reach 6.2 percent of GDP in 2024 (more than double the nominal European maximum), during upcoming budget negotiations.

Yet the new premier will soon find himself navigating the same competing interests, pressures, and factions as his predecessor. Even assuming the Macronists can rely on Les Républicains’ votes, Bayrou still needs to fill a considerable gap of support in the National Assembly to pass a budget, or at least to survive a no-confidence vote. The “common foundation,” as Barnier’s coalition was nicknamed, had just over two hundred supporters in the lower house, where 289 MPs are needed for an absolute majority. Barnier’s fall came after his attempted use of a special constitutional power, the so-called “49.3,” to adopt a social security financing bill without a vote. The move was overturned in the December 4 censure motion supported by 331 MPs, bringing together the left-wing Nouveau Front Populaire (NFP) but also Marine Le Pen and her hard-right allies.

Bayrou’s appointment can be said to bring the government slightly closer to the center after Barnier’s three months as premier. Bayrou is expected to try to secure the tacit support from center-left parts of the NFP, which is the largest bloc in the National Assembly. He will have minimal room for maneuver, however. The program on which the NFP ran this past summer called for the abolition of Macron’s unpopular increase in the pension age, alongside tax hikes and a raise in the minimum wage. In the lead-up to that law’s adoption in 2023, Bayrou’s MoDem party aired modest critiques of the pension reform drive — notably over Macron’s refusal to consider increases in payroll taxes. Over the last week, the Parti Socialiste, part of the NFP, has tempered calls for a full repeal of the 2023 retirement reform, urging a suspension and talks on new financing initiatives. But any real overtures to the Left would likely face stiff resistance from the legislators on whom Bayrou relies and most of all Macron.

In a rare cross-party meeting at the presidential palace this past Tuesday, Macron hosted negotiations with the leadership of the Écologistes, the Parti Communiste Français (PCF) and the Parti Socialiste — three of the four main NFP parties, i.e., apart from France Insoumise — alongside Les Républicains and the Macronist parties. They spoke of a “new method” of governing. But talk of a national-unity government has since receded. In a message to the new premier shortly after his nomination, the Parti Socialiste announced that it would remain in the opposition. Its main demand at this point appears to be that Bayrou refrain from using the “49.3,” obliging him to win the support from either the center left or far right to pass legislation. To avoid a government shutdown, parliament is expected to approve a special financing law to temporarily renew the 2024 budget before another finance bill is proposed in the new year.

After following in the Parti Socialiste’s footsteps by entering into negotiations with Macron, the Écologistes and the PCF also appear to be reining in their expectations. PCF national secretary Fabien Roussel called Bayrou’s nomination “bad news,” although he later told broadcaster LCI that “if there is no 49.3, there is no censure motion.” Calling the week’s back and forth a “bad vaudeville sketch” in a post on X/Twitter, Écologistes leader Marine Tondelier likewise kept open the pathway to “not no-confidencing” Bayrou’s government, conditioning it more explicitly on policy concessions from the new premier. Angling for Macron’s resignation and snap presidential elections, France Insoumise is as of now the only party in the NFP — and the only caucus in the National Assembly — that has committed itself to another no-confidence vote.