François René Jean Bayrou (; born 25 May 1951) is a French politician who served as Prime Minister of France from December 2024 to September 2025. He has presided over the European Democratic Party (EDP) since 2004 and the Democratic Movement (MoDem) since 2007. A centrist, he was a candidate in the 2002, 2007 and 2012 presidential elections.
From 1993 to 1997, Bayrou was Minister of National Education in three successive governments. He was also a member of the National Assembly for a seat in Pyrénées-Atlantiques from 1986 to 2012 with brief interruptions and a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) from 1999 to 2002. He has been mayor of Pau from 2014 to 2026.
It was speculated that Bayrou would be a candidate in the 2017 presidential election, but he decided not to run and instead supported Emmanuel Macron, who – after winning the election – named him Minister of State and Minister of Justice in the government headed by Édouard Philippe. On 21 June 2017, he resigned from the government amid an investigation into the MoDem's allegedly fraudulent employment of parliamentary assistants, initiated earlier that month. He was cleared of those accusations in 2024.
On 13 December 2024, he was appointed as prime minister by Emmanuel Macron after the Barnier government was brought down by a vote of no confidence. He himself was brought down by a confidence vote, and submitted his resignation on 9 September 2025. Polls had shown he had become the most unpopular prime minister under the Fifth Republic.
Early life and education Bayrou was born 25 May 1951 in Bordères, Pyrénées-Atlantiques, a village located between Pau and Lourdes. He is the son of farmer Calixte Bayrou (1909–1974), MRP mayor of Bordères from 1947 to 1953, and Emma Sarthou (1917–2009). Bayrou descends from an ancestry of primarily Occitans except from his maternal grandmother's side which is Irish.
When Bayrou was in his youth, he developed a stutter which led to him attending speech therapy for seven years. He first went to secondary school in Pau, before transferring to Bordeaux. He studied literature at university, and at the age of 23, sat the "agrégation", the highest qualifying level for teachers in senior high schools and preparatory classes in France. Around the same time, his father was killed in a tractor accident. After studying at Bordères primary school, he obtained a baccalaureate in classical literature (French, Latin, and Greek) in 1968 from the public high school of Nay-Bourdettes. He continued his studies in literary preparatory classes at the Lycée Michel de Montaigne in Bordeaux, then at the University of Bordeaux-III, where in 1972 he wrote a master's thesis on Charles Péguy's The Mystery of the Charity of Joan of Arc. In 1974, he obtained the agrégation (academic qualification) in classical literature and then taught in Pau until 1979.
Bayrou married Élisabeth Perlant, also known as "Babette", in 1971. He and Perlant have five children, Hélène, Marie, Dominique, Calixte and Agnès. The children were raised on the farm where Bayrou was born and where Bayrou currently lives with Perlant.
Prior to embarking on his political career, Bayrou taught history in Béarn in the French Pyrenees.Kramer, Jane. "Round One", The New Yorker, 23 April 2007. He has written several books on politics and history, including one on King Henry IV of France. Bayrou's hobby is raising horses. He is a practising Roman Catholic but strongly supports France's system of secularism (French: laïcité).
Political career First steps in politics: 1974–2002 When Bayrou did not participate in May 68, he was active in nonviolent movements and followed Gandhi disciple, Lanza del Vasto. Despite his religious convictions, he did not join the Jeunesse Étudiante Chrétienne. From the early 1970s, he was a member of the Amitié Charles Péguy, which he cites as his intellectual references.
He entered politics in 1974, after his agrégation in classical literature, joining the Democratic Centre (CD) of Jean Lecanuet, candidate in the 1965 presidential election against General de Gaulle. The party became the Centre of Social Democrats (CDS) in 1976, and François Bayrou is considered Lecanue's "scribe".
Bayrou, a member of the Centre of Social Democrats (CDS), the Christian-democratic wing of the Union for French Democracy (UDF) confederation, was elected to the General Council of the Pyrénées-Atlantiques department in 1982 in the canton of Pau-Sud, then the French National Assembly four years later. After the victory of the RPR/UDF coalition in the 1993 legislative election, he became Education Minister in the cabinet led by Édouard Balladur. In this post, he proposed a reform allowing local authorities to subsidise private schools, which caused massive protests and was quashed by the Constitutional Council.
In 1989, after poor results in both the municipal elections and the European Parliament elections, Bayrou and twelve other centre-right parliamentarians including Philippe Séguin, Michel Noir, Alain Carignon, Étienne Pinte, Michel Barnier, François Fillon, Charles Millon, Dominique Baudis, François d'Aubert, Philippe de Villiers and Bernard Bosson demanded reform of the system at the RPR and the UDF, criticising the most prominent politicians of these parties including former president Valéry Giscard d'Estaing and Prime Minister Jacques Chirac. They called for the formation of a new right-wing party to unite the UDF and the RPR into a single entity. Ideological differences between members of this group led to members leaving, though d'Estaing endorsed Bayrou to become UDF general secretary in 1991. With Bernard Bosson and Dominique Baudis, as well as the leadership of the Centre for Social Democrats (CDS), François Bayrou also decided to support the dissident list "The Centre for Europe" in the European elections, led by Simone Veil, against the RPR-UDF union list, led by the former President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing.
Despite supporting Édouard Balladur's candidacy in the 1995 presidential election, Bayrou remained Education Minister following Jacques Chirac's election and the formation of a new government headed by Alain Juppé. Following the majority for the Plural Left in the 1997 legislative election, Bayrou returned to opposition and became president of the UDF in 1998, transforming it into a unified party rather than a union of smaller parties.
Positioning of the UDF as a centrist party: 2002–2007 In 2002 François Bayrou rejected proposals to merge the UDF with the Rally for the Republic (RPR), into a new entity that later became the Union for a Popular Movement (UMP). As a result, many UDF members left to join the UMP. Bayrou was increasingly critical of the direction taken by the UMP-led government, which he described as out of touch with the average Frenchman. He denounced the de facto two-party system, in which the Socialist Party and the RPR (later UMP) alternate. Instead, Bayrou called for a pluralist system in which other parties would also contribute.
On 16 May 2006, Bayrou supported a motion of no confidence sponsored by Socialist deputies calling for the resignation of Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin's government following the Clearstream affair. As de Villepin's UMP had an absolute majority in the National Assembly, the motion failed. Following Bayrou's support for this measure, France's television authority classified him as a member of the parliamentary opposition for timing purposes. However, after Bayrou protested, he was classified as a member of neither the majority nor the opposition.
Second presidential campaign: 2007 Bayrou contested the presidency again in 2007. Most commentators had expected the election to be fought primarily between Nicolas Sarkozy and Ségolène Royal of the Parti Socialiste. However, Bayrou's increasing support in polls in February complicated the "Sarko-Ségo" scenario, and led to speculation that the Parti Socialiste candidate would fail to progress to the second round for a second consecutive election, following the defeat of former Prime Minister Lionel Jospin in 2002 by National Front leader Jean Marie Le Pen. Ultimately, Bayrou finished in third place in the election with 18.57% of the vote (6,820,119 votes), behind Sarkozy and Royal, the best performance by the UDF in a presidential election since 1981. Bayrou declared that he could not endorse either Sarkozy or Royal in the second round, although he indicated that Sarkozy was the worse of the two.
Foundation of the Democratic Movement: 2007–2012
After the 2007 election, Bayrou intended to form a new centrist party, the Democratic Movement (MoDem). The majority of UDF politicians did not follow him, and instead formed a rival party, the New Centre, which pledged to support an alliance with the UMP. However, most of the UDF's grassroots membership remained with Bayrou and joined MoDem. In the subsequent legislative elections in June 2007, MoDem came third with 7.6% of the vote. Although an increase on the UDF share of the poll of 4.9% in the 2002 elections, MoDem won only four seats, including Bayrou's own seat. The other parliamentarians elected on the party's list were Jean Lassalle, Thierry Benoit (who has since left the party, to join the New Centre) and Abdoulatifou Aly. The establishment of MoDem led to the formal dismantling of the UDF alliance on 30 November.
Third presidential election: 2012
On 18 August 2011, Bayrou released a book, 2012. Etat d'urgence, in which he discussed how and why the 2008 financial crisis happened, and outlined the top priorities of his next presidential program: production and education.
François Bayrou confirmed his candidacy for the 2012 presidential election on 25 November 2011, in an interview with journalist Laurence Ferrari on her show Parole Directe on TF1.
His supporters included: Jean Arthuis, president of the Centrist Alliance, president of the Senate Finance Committee (2002–2011) Bernard Bosson, Mayor of Annecy (1977–2007), member of the National Assembly of France for Haute-Savoie (1986–2007) Pierre Albertini, Mayor of Rouen Anne-Marie Idrac, Secretary of State for International Trade under Nicolas Sarkozy (2008–2010) Alain Lambert, Budget Minister (2002–2004) Daniel Garrigue, member of the National Assembly of France for Dordogne and former press secretary for Dominique de Villepin Jean-François Kahn, author and former director of the newspaper Marianne
Bayrou was eliminated in the first round, receiving around half of his vote share from 2007; he endorsed Socialist François Hollande in the runoff.
2017 presidential election On 22 February 2017, Bayrou stated that he would not contest the 2017 presidential election, instead endorsing the centrist candidate Emmanuel Macron of En Marche!.Kim Willsher, French elections: Emmanuel Macron and François Bayrou form alliance , The Guardian (22 February 2017). The alliance surprised French political pundits and rival candidates. Part of the agreement was Macron's commitment to support a clean government law proposed by Bayrou. Bayrou said that France was "at extreme risk", requiring an "exceptional response", adding that the alliance did not mean that MoDem would be subsumed by En Marche!
Minister of Justice (2017) On 17 May 2017, Bayrou was appointed as Minister of Justice in the first Philippe government.
Le Canard enchaîné published information that Democratic Movement politician Marielle de Sarnez had been paid for work she had not actually done, embroiling Bayrou in a scandal about fictitious jobs. France Info later reported that MoDem had "over a dozen" fictitious jobs in the European Parliament.
Bayrou resigned several days before the 2017 legislative election, only 35 days after he had taken the post. He was found not guilty of those accusations in February 2024.
Later career In September 2020, Bayrou was appointed as high commissioner for planification by Prime minister Jean Castex..