France must stand firm in face of ‘new world disorder’ embodied by Musk, says PM
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François Bayrou said France must look global powers ‘face on’ in reference to Donald Trump’s return to office. The French prime minister, François Bayrou, has said France must stand firm in the face of figures such as the tech billionaire Elon Musk, who represents a “new world disorder”.
In his first policy speech to the French parliament on Tuesday, Bayrou, a veteran centrist, said there was “a new world order, or rather a new world disorder, that threatens all equilibrium and all rules of defence. There are a certain number of people who embody this without complex, such as Elon Musk.”.
Musk, a close ally of the US president-elect Donald Trump, is expected to play an influential role in Washington in the coming four years. Bayrou cited what he called Trump’s “threats to annex sovereign territories, Greenland, the Panama canal, and even Canada”. He said it was for France to look at this “face on” and show such global powers “who were are”. France must be able to “express our determination”, he said.
On the domestic front, Bayrou, who became France’s fourth prime minister in a year when he took office a month ago, faces a challenge to get agreement on a long-overdue budget plan for 2025 and resolve bitter disputes over a 2023 pension reform. Like his predecessor, the rightwing Michel Barnier, who lasted just three months before being brought down in a no-confidence vote, Bayrou lacks a majority in the national assembly. He could face a similar fate if he fails to win at least tacit backing from enough opposition MPs.
