内容摘要：Vasily is a Russian IT consultant who relocated to Armenia in 2023. "Armenia was the most friendly to people from Russia in order to help them move, adapt and so on," he says.

Vasily is a Russian IT consultant who relocated to Armenia in 2023. "Armenia was the most friendly to people from Russia in order to help them move, adapt and so on," he says.

In the summer of 2021, he launched a bid to be conservative candidate in the 2022 French presidential election, sparing no criticism of President Emmanuel Macron, who he said had ruled France in an “arrogant” manner.Away from Brussels, Mr Barnier began to shed his image of a consummate EU technocrat.

He called for staunch anti-immigration policies to be implemented in France and across the EU, and said France should be able to ignore certain rulings of the European Court of Justice and the European Court of Human Rights. Some observers were surprised, and interpreted this as populist move.Others felt Mr Barnier was merely heeding the lessons of Brexit and keeping an eye on the mood of voters.But his bid to be the Republicans’ presidential candidate was unsuccessful, and for the past three years Mr Barnier has made little noise, as France's political landscape has become increasingly polarised.

His name had come up occasionally as a potential candidate for prime minister after the July 2024 snap election that left France deadlocked. But it was not until 60 days after the vote that he was named PM by President Macron.Although Mr Barnier is still primarily known as

, President Macron is likely to have chosen him because they are both from the pro-European establishment and share the same right-wing leanings on the economic front.

His Republican background puts him at odds with left-wing parties, but it does mean that centrist, right-wing and populist forces could help him survive the first hurdle of his premiership - a likely vote of confidence.And their normalisation is not an entirely new phenomenon. Former Italian prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, a centre-right politician, was the first EU leader to take the plunge. He formed a government with the post-fascist political group, Movimento Sociale Italiano, back in 1994.

Six years later, Austria’s conservatives went into coalition with the far-right Freedom Party. At the time, the EU was so outraged that it blocked official bilateral contacts with Austria for several months.Post-war political etiquette dictated the political mainstream must form a

, a “health barrier”, at election time to keep the extreme right out of European governments.The universally recognised term for that practice is French, which gives you a sense how passionately many in France felt about it.