Under pressure to form a government quickly, François Bayrou was criticized from all sides on Tuesday for choosing to go to Pau instead of Mayotte, in the grip of a major humanitarian crisis, and defending the accumulation of mandates.
The Prime Minister, appointed on Friday, took a Republic plane very early on Tuesday from Pau to return to Paris to continue his consultations with political groups, before giving his first major oral presentation to the National Assembly.
The deputies will not fail to question him about his choice to go to his city to defend his position as mayor, rather than attending a crisis meeting in Mayotte – which he followed remotely. He will also be questioned on his wish to reconsider the ban on the accumulation of parliamentary mandates.
His decision sparked heated controversy even in his camp.
The president of the National Assembly Yaël Braun-Pivet affirmed on franceinfo that she would have “preferred that the Prime Minister, instead of taking a plane to Pau, take the plane to Mamoudzou”capital of Mayotte, devastated by a cyclone which would have caused “several hundred”even “a few thousand” deaths, according to authorities.

The President of the National Assembly Yaël Braun-Pivet speaks in the hemicycle, Paris, December 16, 2024 / GEOFFROY VAN DER HASSELT / AFP
She also reiterated her opposition to the accumulation of mandates, defended Monday evening by the Prime Minister: “this is really not the time” of “put this subject back on the table”. “Today the subject is the budget, it’s Mayotte”.
The boss of the Communist Party Fabien Roussel judged on BFMTV and RMC “indecent to talk about the accumulation of mandates (…) while at the moment we are burying children, residents in Mayotte”.
Rare voice to come to the rescue of the Prime Minister, Hervé Marseille, the leader of the centrist senators, defender of cumulation, estimated that he had “did what he had to do”. “Not everyone is going to arrive in Mayotte”where Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau went on Monday and where Emmanuel Macron is expected in the coming days. Those responsible for the archipelago “have other things to do than receive the authorities”insisted the president of the UDI.
– Government “this week” –
After the far right, the center, the socialists and the right on Monday, François Bayrou receives on Tuesday the representatives of the ecologists, the MoDem, Horizons, the independents of Liot, the communists, and the ex-LR Eric Ciotti now allied of the RN.
For him, it is a question of measuring the support he has to form a government capable of passing, in a fractured Assembly, a budget for 2025, of which the country has been deprived since censorship.
François Bayrou hopes at the end of these consultations to form a government “this week”. “But the president must be there”he added, about Emmanuel Macron’s very busy schedule this week.
The entourage of the Head of State seems to have little taste for the allusion and is encouraging François Bayrou to start making proposals today. “When he’s ready, we’re ready”assured a relative.
Bayrou “goes astray”
François Bayrou, who was a former deputy from 2002 to 2012, should still face criticism in the National Assembly, where he will answer questions from group presidents alone for 45 minutes, since the ministers in place have resigned and are therefore not authorized to participate in the exercise.
The former Macronist Minister of the Interior Gérald Darmanin will question him in particular on Mayotte and “the exceptional means that the State must employ”.
He will also undoubtedly be questioned about the accumulation of mandates. The First Secretary of the Socialist Party Olivier Faure judged on France 2 that the Prime Minister “goes astray” with this « sortie ».
“By holding on to this position of mayor” of Paul, “Mr Bayrou is making a serious mistake” lined with a “significant political misconduct” et “symbolically dramatic”estimated the coordinator of La France insoumise, Manuel Bompard on Sud Radio.
Nothing in the law prohibits the accumulation of a ministerial function and a local mandate, but Yaël Braun-Pivet recalled that a constitutional reform, unfinished and providing “the non-cumulation of ministerial functions and a local executive”had been “voted almost unanimously” of deputies in 2018.
For its part, the National Rally believes that it “is surely possible” to combine the mandates of deputy and mayor “below a certain threshold” of population, underlined Laure Lavalette on TF1.