Serious doubts
“People were shocked by the affair,” said Frédéric Dabi, director general at IFOP. Dabi said the public appeared to have serious doubts about Bayrou’s version of events and questioned whether the prime minister was trying to protect powerful people around him at the time.
Wednesday’s hearing will likely prove pivotal for Bayrou, especially with a looming budget crisis and an incensed far right nipping at his heels after Marine Le Pen was found guilty of embezzlement and barred from running for president.
The opposition, it appears, is out for blood.
“Not only did he lie, but he repeated his lies in front of members of the parliament and in front of the Bétharram victims,” said far-left opposition lawmaker Paul Vannier, who is co-rapporteur of the parliamentary inquiry and will be grilling Bayrou on Wednesday, referring to Bayrou’s denials.
While Bayrou has been able to survive France’s gridlocked politics longer than his predecessor Michel Barnier, his minority center-right government is hanging by a thread and surviving thanks only to a fractured opposition, which could coalesce against it in the upcoming budget cycle.
Bayrou is seeking €40 billion in savings — mostly through spending cuts — in France’s 2026 budget as part of his effort to bring down an unsustainable deficit, but he’s been criticized for failing to come up with a serious approach. His latest proposal to put the budget to a referendum raised eyebrows in his own coalition and among Macron’s inner circle.
