Michel Barnier’s journey from Mr Brexit to French Prime Minister

France’s new prime minister has had a long career in politics, but Michel Barnier is best known even in his native France as the EU’s chief negotiator during Brexit. His task is to represent the EU in talks with the British government.

Mr. Barnier was born in the mountains of Savoie in southeastern France in 1951. He is keen on skiing and hiking. Since his teenage years, he has inherited the tradition of French leader Charles de Gaulle and is a staunch patriotic conservative.

As a teenager, he joined the right-wing Union for the Defense of the Republic (UDR) party. To this day, he still belongs to the Republican Party (LR), the successor to the United Democratic Alliance.

Mr Barnier did not attend France’s Ecole Nationale d’Administration, from which many of the country’s leaders have emerged, but he did make history when, at 27, he became the youngest person ever elected to parliament.

In 1982, he married lawyer Isabelle Altmayer.

Mr. Barnier was very proud of bringing the Winter Olympics to Savoie in 1992, a feat he said taught him how to work on large projects involving many people while always keeping his eye on the prize.

The following year he entered politics and served as a cabinet minister in various French governments for several years. In 2010, he became EU Commissioner for the Internal Market – one of the European Commission’s most coveted positions.

Still, Mr. Barnier aims higher. In 2014, he unsuccessfully tried to become president of the European Commission, ultimately losing to Jean-Claude Juncker.

In July 2016, a month after Britain voted to leave the European Union, Mr Juncker – who said he wanted an “experienced politician to do this difficult job” – chose Mr Barnier to negotiate Brexit. European Agreement.

His nomination surprised some of Mr Barnier’s fellow Frenchmen, who had never held him in particularly high esteem. Just a few years ago, a reporter for the French newspaper Liberation famously said that Mr. Barnier, by then a senior politician, would always be just a “beautiful white-toothed skier with very limited intelligence.” ”.

When it comes to the EU, however, Mr Barnier has a reputation as hardworking and methodical. Crucially, he is also seen as calm – a valuable trait in the early months after the Brexit vote.

Throughout the difficult Brexit process, which has seen him work with an ever-changing cast of British negotiators and prime ministers, Barnier has remained largely unflappable in the face of what he has repeatedly called a “costly and painful divorce”.

Although he is most often photographed sitting at the negotiating table in Brussels or London, much of the work to get Britain out of the EU was done by Barnier’s staff. Behind the scenes, his first priority is to travel across Europe to build consensus among the 27 member states and ensure that the EU maintains a united front.

In the process, he became a familiar sight on television screens on both sides of the English Channel and beyond – tall, stylish and debonair, often flanked by EU flags and appearing enigmatic.

There was barely any emotion in his voice when he announced a post-Brexit trade deal between the EU and the UK on December 24, 2020, switching seamlessly from English to French.

Mr Barnier has long been fond of the metaphor of hiking, once comparing Brexit to climbing a mountain. Soon after conquering that mountain, he started climbing the next one.

In the summer of 2021, he launched a campaign as a conservative candidate for the 2022 French presidential election and spared no effort to criticize President Macron, saying that Macron ruled France in an “arrogant” way.

After leaving Brussels, Barnier began to shed his image as a consummate technocrat in the EU.

He called for firm anti-immigration policies in France and across the EU, saying France should be able to ignore certain rulings by the European Court of Justice and the European Court of Human Rights. Some observers were surprised and interpreted it as a populist move.

Others believe Mr Barnier is simply learning from the lessons of Brexit and paying attention to the mood of voters.

But his bid to become the Republican presidential nominee was unsuccessful, and over the past three years, Mr. Barnier has made little noise as France’s political landscape has become increasingly polarized.

His name has occasionally cropped up as a potential prime ministerial candidate after snap elections in July 2024 that left France in deadlock. But he was not appointed prime minister by President Macron until 60 days after the vote.

Although Mr Barnier is still mainly known as Mr BrexitPresident Macron is likely to choose him because they both come from pro-European circles and share the same right-wing leanings on the economy.

His Republican background puts him at odds with parties on the left, but it does mean that centrist, right-wing and populist forces could help him get through the first hurdle of his term as prime minister – possibly a vote of confidence.

David Davis, a former Brexit secretary who worked closely with Mr Barnier for many years, told the BBC he was “a really down-to-earth Frenchman” with “a real interest in France has deep roots.”

In his first speech as prime minister, Mr Barnier acknowledged the challenges of the task ahead and vowed to tell the truth “even if it’s hard to hear”.

“There is a need for respect, appeasement and solidarity,” he said, a nod to the fraught political landscape he now presides over.

“It is with great humility that I begin this new phase, this new blank page.”