The new French government has been formed, with Michel Barnier to serve as prime minister – but what does it mean for LGBTQ+ rights in the country?

Although a left-wing alliance of parties won the most seats, right-wing politician Michel Barnier was appointed prime minister, after a summer marked by political uncertainty in the wake of large election loses by president Emmanuel Macron’s party.

Barnier, 73, has been a member of the Republican Party since 2015 but is best-known for leading the EU’s Brexit negotiations with the UK.

As far back as 1981, he voted against a bill that eventually set the same age of consent for gay and straight people. Up until 1982, it was 15 for heterosexuals but 21 for homosexuals. This bill is widely considered the last step to homosexuality being decriminalisation in France.

In 1999, Barnier voted against same-sex civil partnerships. France’s oldest prime minister, he replaced centre-right Gabriel Attal, the country’s youngest prime minister and first out gay PM.

Shortly after the new government was announced, Attal asked his successor “to state clearly in his general policy statement that there will be no going back on IVF [In vitro fertilisation], abortion rights and LGBT rights”.

Barnier responded on national TV that he intends to be a “a bulwark for the preservation of all these rights acquired by the men and women of France in terms of freedom and social progress”.

His answer seems to indicate that has changed his mind on the subject, Régis Schlagdenhauffen, an associate professor at the School for Advanced Studies in Social Sciences, in Paris, told the Associated Press news agency that Barnier might have “become wise”.