The new French Prime Minister, Michel Barnier, comes from a long political career in France, where over the years, with different governments and different presidents, he has held numerous ministerial positions. But it is within the community institutions and in particular as 'Monsieur Brexit' that he has established himself as a leading political figure, managing to unravel a seemingly inextricable skein.
Minister of the Environment with Mitterrand (1993), holder of European Affairs (1995) and Foreign Affairs (2004) with Chirac, the 73-year-old native of La Tronche, in Isère, where he was born on January 9, 1951 - the oldest prime minister appointed in France, succeeding the youngest - was also a minister of Sarkozy, at the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries (2007). A career that saw him at a young age achieve the record of the youngest deputy elected in France, in 1978, a record he held for about two decades.
A convinced Gaullist, strongly pro-European - "I have always thought that one could be both patriotic and European at the same time", he likes to repeat - in 1999 he was appointed in Brussels as European Commissioner for Regional Policy, in 2010 for the Internal Market and Services. Finally, in 2016 he was given the task of negotiating Brexit. A hard worker, considered very serious in his commitment, he is described as a man of energy, whose secret lies in daily sports and a healthy diet. Not very inclined to mediaticity - "The invisible man of French politics", describes Laurent Fabius, his rival at the Quai D'Orsay - he explains that he prefers "being effective to being media".
On Brexit, the watchword was not to let "neither emotion nor passion" transpire and to guarantee transparency, with continuous reports to the member states on the progress of the negotiations. "Barnier is a gentleman, but a tough gentleman", commented Boris Johnson, speaking of his firmness in the negotiations. If his method is praised by those close to him, across the Channel the judgments about him were not as flattering, already as Commissioner for Home Affairs: "the most dangerous man in Europe" was how some British media defined him.
In 2021, the exponent of Les Républicains tries his luck in the Republican primaries for the 2022 presidential elections, an attempt that sees him take firmer positions on immigration and sovereignty, with a shift to the right that confuses some of its historical supporters. In the end, he fails to prevail over Valérie Pécresse. A few years later, he is ready to take his place on the national scene again.
