Meet Michel Barnier : former French Prime Minister

Member of Parliament for Paris, former Prime Minister of France and the European Union’s Chief Brexit Negotiator A member of the main successive Gaullist parties (UDR, RPR, UMP, LR), Michel Barnier entered politics in 1973, first in Savoie, before moving onto the national and European stage. He was elected to the French National Assembly in 1978, becoming its youngest member at the time. He has held several ministerial posts — including Environment, European Affairs, Foreign Affairs, and Agriculture and Food — and served twice as a European Commissioner, first for Regional Policy and later for the Internal Market and Financial Services, before being appointed Chief Negotiator for the European Union during the Brexit talks. In March 2021, he left the European Commission. In June of that year, he published The Great Illusion: Secret Brexit Diary (Éditions Gallimard), also released in English (Polity Press) and translated into Spanish, Greek and Romanian. In September 2024, he was appointed Prime Minister of France, a role he held until December of the same year. In June 2025, he published his latest book, What I Learned from You (Calmann-Lévy). Since September 2025, he has served as Member of Parliament for Paris’s second constituency.