Anti-independence politicians in New Caledonia have welcomed the appointment of Michel Barnier as the new French Prime Minister in Paris. A member of the conservative political party Les Républicains (LR), Barnier has long called for France’s overseas territories to remain within the French Republic and once described them as “the beating heart of France.”
French President Emmanuel Macron announced on 5 September that Barnier would take the top job in France’s National Assembly, to form “a unifying government to serve the country and the French people.” The appointment came after an agonisingly long wait, nearly two months after National Assembly elections on 7 July, which saw a significant setback to Macron’s authority.
In New Caledonia, deeply affected by nearly four months of protests and clashes between independence activists and French police, Barnier’s appointment was warmly welcomed by leading anti-independence politicians.
Virginie Ruffenach of Rassemblement-Les Républicains (the local affiliate of the French political party) welcomed his appointment on social media, saying he is “a quality personality from our political family Les Républicains, who has always had a clear position on French New Caledonia.”
As Barnier heads to Matignon (the Prime Minister’s residence in Paris), leaders of the anti-independence Loyalists coalition also welcomed the appointment of a new conservative Prime Minister.
Sonia Backès, Loyalist leader and President of New Caledonia’s Southern Province, tweeted: “Very happy with the appointment of Michel Barnier to Matignon. In 2021, he said ‘France must reaffirm its attachment to New Caledonia, French territory in the South Pacific’. Now is the time…”
Nicolas Metzdorf, a Loyalist politician re-elected in July as one of two New Caledonian deputies in the French National Assembly said: “Finally, a Prime Minister! A man of the Right who knows the New Caledonian issue – that’s a good choice for us.”
Chaos in the French legislature
The National Assembly is the lower house of the French parliament, with 577 members known as deputies: anyone seeking to pass legislation requires 289 votes for a majority. However after elections in 2022 and again this year, no parliamentary group has an absolute majority in their own right – a recipe for ongoing chaos in Paris until the next elections in 2027.
After the second round of voting on 7 July, the largest group in the legislature is the Nouveau Front Populaire (NFP: New Popular Front) with 193 seats, an alliance of nine Left-wing parties including La France Insoumise, the Socialist Party, the Greens and the French Communist Party. The so-called “presidential majority” came second, linking President Macron’s Renaissance party with smaller groups, including Horizons and the Democratic Movement (MoDem), for a combined total of 166 seats.
Pre-election polling had suggested that the Rassemblement national (RN: National Rally) would top the poll. However the extreme-Right party, formerly the National Front, came in third with just 126 seats.
Even this tally was ahead of the traditional Gaullist party Les Républicains (LR: Ihe Republicans), which had gone into the elections divided. Outgoing LR President Eric Ciotti sought to build an alliance with Rassemblement national, and his dissident ticket won 16 seats. However most of the LR membership refused a formal partnership with the anti-immigrant party led by Marine Le Pen, and they won 47 seats.
In France, the Prime Minister is appointed (and sacked) by the President, not the parliament. However for more than 50 days after the elections, Emmanuel Macron refused to offer the prime ministership to any candidate, snubbing the candidate of the left-wing alliance NFP. Even as the Olympics faded into the rear-view mirror, Macron spent further time talking to colleagues and elder statesman to decide on a candidate.
Barnier’s appointment on 5 September has angered many French voters, concerned that his party is politically divided and a coalition government won’t have the numbers or unity to govern. On social media, the Socialist Party tweeted: “Michel Barnier has neither political legitimacy nor republican legitimacy. The Socialist Party will vote against Michel Barnier’s appointment and his government.”
Barnier and the Blue Pacific
At 73, Barnier will be France’s oldest prime minister under the Fifth Republic, first established by General Charles de Gaulle in 1958. Over the last 30 years, he has served in a range of French governments, including a brief term as Minister of Foreign Affairs (2004-05). He has also worked for the European Union, especially as the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator with the United Kingdom, as the EU decided terms after Britain’s decision to exit the European Union in a 2016 referendum.
Looking back at his record, it’s clear that the new Prime Minister is deeply entrenched in the Gaullist tradition. For years, he has written and spoken about France as a global power that maintains its standing on the world stage because it has colonial dependencies in every ocean of the world.
In September 1996, Barnier led the French delegation to the South Pacific Forum in Majuro, Marshall Islands. This regional summit came just eight months after the end of French nuclear testing in the Pacific.
Accompanied by France’s newly appointed Secretary of State for the Pacific Gaston Flosse (then President of French Polynesia), Barnier urged Pacific leaders to look forward to a new partnership (possibly hoping they’d forgotten France’s 1985 terrorist attack against the Rainbow Warrior, the 1988 Ouvea massacre and the health and environmental legacies of 193 atmospheric and underground nuclear tests at Moruroa and Fangataufa atolls).
“We are pleased that all the countries of the South Pacific Forum, and even of the North Pacific, have understood that France has a clear and sincere position,” Barnier told Forum leaders in Majuro. “Now the page has been turned and we want to relaunch our cooperation in this region with all the States.”
Fast forward 26 years. In 2021, Barnier decided to seek the nomination of his party to stand against President Macron in the April 2022 French presidential elections. In the end, he failed to be nominated by his own party, with Valerie Pecresse carrying the LR banner to defeat as President Macron won a second term.
During his presidential bid, Barnier sought support from citizens in France’s overseas colonies in the Atlantic, Indian and Pacific Oceans, and in November 2021, he wrote an article entitled L’Outre-Mer, ce cœur battant de la France (The Overseas Territories, the beating heart of France). It’s a classic example of Gaullist ideology, highlighting the importance of the overseas colonies to underpin France’s status as a global power.
“France’s overseas territories are an asset for a country like ours, a founding member of the European Union and a permanent member of the UN Security Council,” Barnier wrote. “It allows France to be present in the four corners of the globe.”
Barnier also describes significant opportunities to tap the riches of the 11,000,000 km² Exclusive Economic Zones claimed by France in oceans around the world, describing the “second maritime space in the world” as a “major asset for our country.”
Reflecting France’s growing interest in the Blue Pacific, he wrote: “Thanks to its overseas territories, France enjoys the second largest maritime area in the world. In a world where threats and dangers are great, this global presence is a guarantee of our independence and our influence.”
Writing just two months after the September 2021announcement of the Australia-United Kingdom-United States (AUKUS) partnership, Barnier noted that Canberra’s breach of the $90 billion Naval Group submarine contract “reminds us of the fragility of certain alliances and the importance of sovereignty. France alone in the Pacific – through its overseas territories – can guarantee its independence and maintain control of our collective destiny.”
At the time, Thierry Santa was leader of Rassemblement-Les Républicains and a former President of New Caledonia. Santa told this correspondent that Australia’s cancellation of the submarine contract had hardened attitudes in Paris, and made sure they would proceed with the December 2021 referendum, against the advice of Kanak political and customary leaders.
“It’s absolutely certain that the ripping up of the submarine contract by Australia and the United States has influenced France’s attitude towards New Caledonia,” Santa said. “I think that for a long time, France was relying heavily on its relationship with Australia to strengthen the Indo-Pacific axis. The fact that Australia has turned its back on the submarine contract has really made France realise that it’s on its own in the Pacific territories.”
New Caledonia within France?
On 12 December 2021, New Caledonians went to the polls for the third referendum on self-determination under the 1998 Noumea Accord – a poll where most independence supporters refused to participate, undercutting the legitimacy and political credibility of the pol, as many indigenous Kanak refused to vote.
Barnier unambiguously backed the anti-independence parties campaigning for a No vote in the December referendum, writing: “I want to send a message of hope and support to all our compatriots in New Caledonia…. Without reservations or pretence, I give my full support to those who will vote for New Caledonia to remain French.”
Today, Rassemblement’s Virginie Ruffenach say his appointment once again reinforces her party’s call for New Caledonia to remain part of the French Republic.
“Of course, we are pleased with his appointment,” Ruffenach told journalists. “We know his commitment to a French New Caledonia. He has had a very clear position in recent years, on various subjects, particularly in the context of the submarine affair. So it’s a good thing, especially since we were waiting to have, once again, an interlocutor at Matignon to be able to deal with the urgent situation in our territory.”
Independence supporters see Macron’s decision to snub the NFP candidate and appoint a conservative figure like Barnier as a reinforcement of France’s colonial policy in the Pacific.
Laurie Humuni, a spokesperson for the Kanak Socialist National Liberation Front (FLNKS), said: “The New Popular Front was in the lead in the elections. It is a shame to see this denial of democracy – perhaps President Macron gave in to pressure from the Rassemblement national and Les Républicains.”
“Mr. Barnier seems to me to have positioned himself in favour of a New Caledonia within France,” she added. “This Prime Minister should be reminded that New Caledonia is in a process of irreversible decolonisation, and that we must move towards full, sovereign independence for the country.”
More delay ahead?
In Noumea, many business leaders and politicians across the political spectrum have been driven to despair by the drift in French leadership.
On 3 September, two days before Barnier’s appointment, Loyalist leader Sonia Backès flew to Paris for a meeting with President Macron. After the meeting, she called on Macron to take responsibility for New Caledonia policy, noting that “the President of the Republic himself must take charge of the issue.”
For the FLNKS and other independence supporters, this is yet another sign of the French State’s lack of independence and neutrality, as supporters and opponents debate the way forward after three referendums in 2018-2021. FLNKS leaders were already angry that Backès was appointed as a junior minister for citizenship in the French government of Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne between July 2022 and September 2023, even as she held on to the presidency of New Caledonia’s Southern Province, and ran for a position in the French Senate (where she was roundly defeated).
In Paris, Prime Minister Barnier will now appoint a Cabinet, and people across the French overseas dependencies await news of who will serve as his Foreign Minister and Overseas Minister. The lengthy delay in choosing the Prime Minister has left little time for an incoming Finance Minister to prepare a 2025 budget by 1 October this year.
Speaking to Islands Business, President of French Polynesia Moetai Brotherson said his nation was better placed than New Caledonia and many other French overseas dependencies, with Papeete already confirming agreement on annual budget allocations from Paris.
“We were lucky because we worked swiftly with the High Commissioner in Tahiti and we were able to renew the major conventions that we have between us and the French State, before this whole thing about the National Assembly,” Brotherson said.
“But still we have major projects that we need to discuss with the French State and we don’t have anyone to talk to at this time,” he said. “It’s my understanding that we are in a much better position than most of the other overseas territories who didn’t expect anything to happen and who still have all their conventions to be renewed. They’re in a worse position than we are.”
As France awaits the new Prime Minister’s first general address to the National Assembly, and independence supporters in New Caledonia prepare for further trouble, there’s a long way to go before the resolution of the current crisis – in both Paris and the South Pacific.