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Brexit negotiator Barnier plans return to French politics

Michel Barnier, the EU's chief negotiator in years of tortuous talks on the British exit from the European Union, said on Tuesday that he now plans a return to French politics.

Published: 29 December 2020 12:29 CET

Brexit negotiator Barnier plans return to French politics

Michel Barnier. Photo: AFP

Barnier, who helped find deals on Brexit in 2019 and then last week an accord on Britain's future trading relationship with the bloc, told French radio he did not intend to join President Emmanuel Macron's centrist movement and rather return to the fold of the right.

“I want to use the energy that I still have to work for my country,” he told France Info radio.

“I will see where I can be useful,” he added. “I want to find the French again.”

Barnier indicated he planned to back, as before his departure to Brussels, the right-wing Les Republicains (LR) rather than Macron's La République en marche (LREM).

“I will try to add my stone to my political family which needs to be rebuilt, and to the French political debate,” he said.

But he dodged a question on whether he harboured ambitions for 2022 presidential elections, saying he was simply a “patriot and a European”.

Before becoming the Brexit chief negotiator in 2016, Barnier had served as EU commissioner for the internal market from 2010-2014.

But Barnier, 69, is also a veteran of French politics, having held several top posts including foreign minister in a cabinet career dating back to the 1990s.

LR has struggled to make an impact on French politics after their candidate François Fillon was felled by a corruption scandal in the 2017 presidential elections that were won by Macron.

Analysts say the president has himself shifted to the right in the last months, scenting that it will be on this ground that the 2022 election battle will be fought.

Member comments

Anonymous - 29 December 2020 at 17:40 CET

Make him Prefet of St Pierre et Miquelon

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France's Uyghurs say Xi visit a 'slap' from Macron

Xi is due to make a state visit to France on Monday and Tuesday.

Dilnur Reyhan, the founder of the European Uyghur Institute and a French national, said she and others were “angry” the Chinese leader was visiting.

“For the Uyghur people — and in particular for French Uyghurs — it’s a slap from our president, Emmanuel Macron,” she said, describing the Chinese leader as “the executioner of the Uyghur people”.

Beijing stands accused of incarcerating more than one million Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in a network of detention facilities across the Xinjiang region.

Campaigners and Uyghurs overseas have said an array of abuses take place inside the facilities, including torture, forced labour, forced sterilisation and political indoctrination.

A UN report last year detailed “credible” evidence of torture, forced medical treatment and sexual or gender-based violence — as well as forced labour — in the region.

But it stopped short of labelling Beijing’s actions a “genocide”, as the United States and some other Western lawmakers have done.

Beijing consistently denies abuses and claims the allegations are part of a deliberate smear campaign to contain its development.

It says it is running vocational training centres in Xinjiang which have helped to combat extremism and enhance development.

Standing beside Reyhan at a press conference in Paris, Gulbahar Haitiwaji, who presented herself as having spent three years in a detention camp, said she was “disappointed”.

“I am asking the president to bring up the issue of the camps with China and to firmly demand they be shut down,” she said.

Human Rights Watch on Friday urged Macron during the visit to “lay out consequences for the Chinese government’s crimes against humanity and deepening repression”.

“Respect for human rights has severely deteriorated under Xi Jinping’s rule,” it said.

“His government has committed crimes against humanity… against Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims in Xinjiang, adopted draconian legislation that has erased Hong Kong’s freedoms, and intensified repression of government critics across the country.”

“President Macron should make it clear to Xi Jinping that Beijing’s crimes against humanity come with consequences for China’s relations with France,” said Maya Wang, acting China director at Human Rights Watch

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