President Emmanuel Macron of France appointed François Bayrou, a veteran centrist politician and one of his top allies, as the new prime minister on Friday, as he struggles to bring the country’s protracted political turmoil and growing economic anxiety under control.
Mr. Bayrou, who becomes France’s fourth prime minister this year — an ominous record — must now form a cabinet capable of shepherding bills through a fractured, cantankerous lower house of Parliament.
Most urgently, the new government will have to finalize an emergency budget by mid-December to avoid a shutdown of essential state services.
And Mr. Bayrou must do all this without being ousted. His predecessor, Michel Barnier was toppled along with his government by a no-confidence vote last week and forced to resign after just three months in office, breaking a record for the shortest-tenured government in modern French history.