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Michel Barnier

Barnier in 2023

Prime Minister of France

Incumbent

Assumed office
5 September 2024

President

Emmanuel Macron

Preceded by

Gabriel Attal

EU offices

Head of the UK Task Force
In office 16 November 2019 – 31 March 2021
President	Jean-Claude Juncker Ursula von der Leyen
Deputy	Clara Martínez Alberola
Preceded by	Position established
Succeeded by	João Vale de Almeida (as Ambassador to the United Kingdom)
Chief Negotiator of Task Force 50
In office 1 October 2016 – 15 November 2019
President	Jean-Claude Juncker
Deputy	Sabine Weyand
Preceded by	Position established
Succeeded by	Position abolished
European Commissioner for Internal Market and Services
In office 10 February 2010 – 31 October 2014
President	José Manuel Barroso
Preceded by	Charlie McCreevy
Succeeded by	Elżbieta Bieńkowska
European Commissioner for Regional Policy
In office 16 September 1999 – 31 March 2004
President	Romano Prodi
Preceded by	Monika Wulf-Mathies
Succeeded by	Jacques Barrot
Member of the European Parliament for Île-de-France
In office 14 July 2009 – 10 February 2010
Succeeded by	Constance Le Grip

French political offices

Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries
In office 19 June 2007 – 22 June 2009
Prime Minister	François Fillon
Preceded by	Christine Lagarde
Succeeded by	Bruno Le Maire
Minister of Foreign Affairs
In office 31 March 2004 – 31 May 2005
Prime Minister	Jean-Pierre Raffarin
Preceded by	Dominique de Villepin
Succeeded by	Philippe Douste-Blazy
Minister for European Affairs
In office 18 May 1995 – 3 June 1997
Prime Minister	Alain Juppé
Preceded by	Alain Lamassoure
Succeeded by	Pierre Moscovici
Minister of the Environment
In office 29 March 1993 – 18 March 1995
Prime Minister	Édouard Balladur
Preceded by	Ségolène Royal
Succeeded by	Corinne Lepage
Senator for Savoie
In office 22 September 1997 – 23 October 1999
In office 2 October 1995 – 31 October 1995
Member of the National Assembly for Savoie's 2nd constituency
In office 3 April 1978 – 1 May 1993
Departmental Councillor of Savoie
In office 5 September 1973 – 13 September 1999

Personal details

Born

9 January 1951 (age 73)
La Tronche, France

Political party

LR (2015–present)

Other political
affiliations

UDR (1967–1976)
RPR (1976–2002)
UMP (2002–2015)

Spouse

Isabelle Altmayer

(m. 1982)

Children

Relatives

Éric and Nicolas Altmayer (brothers-in-law)
René Altmayer (grandfather-in-law)
Victor Joseph Altmayer (great-grandfather-in-law)

Alma mater

ESCP Business School

Michel Jean Barnier ( born 9 January 1951) is a French politician and former European Union (EU) official who has served as Prime Minister of France since 5 September 2024.

A member of a series of Gaullist parties (UDR, RR, UMP, LR), Barnier has served in several French cabinet positions, including as Minister of the Environment from 1993 to 1995, Minister for European Affairs from 1995 to 1997, Minister of Foreign Affairs from 2004 to 2005, and Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries from 2007 to 2009.

At EU level, Barnier was European Commissioner for Internal Market and Services from 2010 to 2014 and vice president of the European People's Party (EPP) from 2010 to 2015. From October 2016 to November 2019, he was the EU's Chief Negotiator in the Task Force for the Preparation and Conduct of the Negotiations with the United Kingdom under Article 50 of the Treaty on European Union (Task Force 50/TF50), then from 2019 to 2021 the European Commission's Head of Task Force for Relations with the United Kingdom (UK Task Force/UKTF).

In August 2021, Barnier announced that he was standing for his party's nomination for President of France in the 2022 presidential election, but later failed to win sufficient support at the 2021 The Republicans congress, placing third.

In September 2024, Barnier was appointed as Prime Minister by President Emmanuel Macron following the 2024 snap legislative election.

Early life and education
Political career
Prime Minister of France
Other activities
Honours and decorations
- National honours
- Foreign honours
See also

Early life and education

Barnier was born at La Tronche in the French Alps, into a Gaullist family in 1951. His father, Jean Barnier,] was a leather and textiles craftsman. His mother, Denise Durand, was a practicing member of the Christian left, who founded a local chapter of the Ligue contre la violence routière [fr]. Barnier is the youngest of the couple's three sons.

In his youth, Barnier was a scout and choirboy. He graduated from the École Supérieure de Commerce de Paris (ESCP) in 1972. During his studies at the ESCP, he was a classmate of Jean-Pierre Raffarin, the future prime minister, and a member of the Conférence Olivaint, a student organisation intended to prepare members for political life.

Political career

National politics

Barnier served on the staff of various Gaullist ministers in the 1970s, before being elected in 1978, aged 27, to the National Assembly as deputy for the department of Savoie representing the neo-Gaullists, Rally for the Republic (RPR), serving until 1993. In 1981, he was among the conservative politicians, including Jacques Chirac and François Fillon, who voted against decriminalizing same-sex relationships involving people between 15 and 18 years of age, which were legal for mixed-sex couples. In the same year, he voted for the abolition of capital punishment, following a number of other right-wing deputies in breaking party instructions not to do so.

He became the youngest president of the departmental council of Savoie in 1982, following a deal called the Union for Savoie [fr] between right-wing and centrist parties in the council.

In 1992, Barnier co-organised the Winter Olympics in Albertville. Barnier first joined the Cabinet as Minister of the Environment following the Right's landslide victory in the 1993 legislative election. In 1995, Jacques Chirac appointed him Minister for European Affairs, a role in which he served until the defeat of the presidential majority in the 1997 legislative election. Barnier then served as a European Commissioner for Regional Policy in the Prodi Commission from 1999 until 2004. He subsequently served as Foreign Minister in Jean-Pierre Raffarin's government until June 2005 when Dominique de Villepin replaced him with Philippe Douste-Blazy.

From 2006-2015, Barnier was vice president of the European People's Party. In 2007, under Nicolas Sarkozy's presidency, he re-joined the Cabinet as Minister of Agriculture.

Barnier with U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, 14 May 2004
Barnier and Angela Merkel in 2009
Michel Barnier in the European Parliament in 2014

European politics

Official portrait of Barnier as EU Commissioner, 1999

Barnier worked in 2006 as a special adviser to José Manuel Barroso, then President of the European Commission, and presented a report to the Council of Ministers proposing the creation of a European civil-protection force. During 2006–2007, he served as member of the Amato Group, a group of high-level European politicians unofficially working on rewriting the Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe into what became known as the Treaty of Lisbon following its rejection by French and Dutch voters.

Barnier led the UMP list in Ile-de-France for the 2009 European Parliament election. In February 2010 he was confirmed as European Commissioner for Internal Market and Services. In charge of European banking system reform, he argued for a "coherent single market with intelligent rules that apply everywhere".

Barnier was twice appointed Acting Commissioner for Industry and Entrepreneurship in Antonio Tajani's stead, from 19 April 2014 to 25 May 2014 while he was on electoral campaign leave for the 2014 elections to the European Parliament and from 1 July 2014 to 16 July 2014 after he took up his seat.

As European Commissioner for Internal Market and Services, Barnier handled many important issues, such as the reform of the financial sector (40 pieces of legislation between 2010 and 2014), the banking union (starting with European Banking Supervision) and the digital single market.

From 2015, Barnier served as unpaid special adviser on European defence policy to President of the European Commission Jean-Claude Juncker.

Brexit negotiator

Barnier intervening in the European Parliament vis-à-vis the latest Brexit developments in January 2019

On 27 July 2016, Barnier was announced as the European Commission's chief negotiator with the United Kingdom over leaving the European Union, under Article 50 of the Treaty on European Union. Commenting on the appointment, Juncker said: "I wanted an experienced politician for this difficult job."

For the 2020 Trade deal negotiation between the UK and EU, Barnier was the main negotiator, who received his negotiating mandate from the European Council on 25 February 2020.

In January 2021, Barnier was appointed special adviser to President Ursula von der Leyen overseeing the ratification of the EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement, under new arrangements that handed responsibility for implementing the agreement to Vice President Maroš Šefčovič.

2022 presidential campaign

In February 2021, Barnier set up a political faction within the Republicans under the name "Patriot and European" in preparation for a possible bid in the 2022 presidential election.

On 27 August 2021, Barnier launched his presidential campaign. In particular, he wanted a three- to five-year moratorium on immigration to the European Union. He proposed to "immediately stop regularizations, rigorously limit family reunification, reduce the reception of foreign students and the systematic execution of the double penalty". On economic issues, he wanted to raise the retirement age from 62 to 65, increase the working week and tighten the conditions for access to social assistance. Many media organizations noted that Barnier sounded like a Eurosceptic and Brexit supporter, contradicting previous positions he had taken on the matter. At the party's 2021 congress, he came in third after Éric Ciotti and Valérie Pécresse; he subsequently endorsed Pécresse.

Prime Minister of France

Following gains by opposition far-right parties in the legislative elections called by President Emmanuel Macron in the summer of 2024, the prime minister, Gabriel Attal, resigned. Macron initially refused his resignation, but accepted it on 16 July. Tubiana dismissed the possibility of becoming prime minister on 22 July. On 5 September, Barnier was appointed as Prime Minister Macron, heading a Parliament divided nearly evenly between the leftist Nouveau Front Populaire which holds a plurality of seats, Macron's centrist to centre-right Ensemble, and the far-right National Rally.

Other activities

Barnier has been a member of the Sustainability and Legacy Commission of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), and of the board of trustees of Friends of Europe, a Brussels-based think tank. In 2021, he published My Secret Brexit Diary, a memoir of the EU's negotiations with the UK during its withdrawal from the bloc.

In 1982, Barnier married Isabelle Altmayer, a lawyer; they have three children.