Then, in 1967, President Charles de Gaulle chose him as Vice-President of the European Commission for Economic & Financial Affairs.

He left the ministry of Economy and Finance in 1978 but stayed as Prime minister until the defeat of Giscard d'Estaing at the 1981 presidential election.

At the head of the cabinet, he was faced with the conflict which divided the parliamentary majority between the "Giscardians" and the neo-Gaullist Rally for the Republic (RPR) led by his predecessor Jacques Chirac.

Instead, he mocked "the bearers of banners" (French: les porteurs de pancartes) and he exhorted "instead of grousing, you should work hard".

After he resigned as head of the cabinet, he was elected deputy of Rhône département under the label of the Union for French Democracy (UDF).

Believing that the "cohabitation" was incompatible with the "Fifth Republic", he let Chirac take the lead of the cabinet after the 1986 legislative election.

In this, in spite of positive polls at the beginning of the campaign, he came third behind the two protagonists of the "cohabitation": the Socialist President François Mitterrand and Jacques Chirac.

In 1995, the RPR Mayor of Lyon, Michel Noir, could not compete for another term due to a judicial indictment, so Barre was the conservative candidate for the mayoralty.

One year later, he finished his last parliamentary term in the French National Assembly and retired from politics.

Raymond Barre was probably the only French politician to have reached such high levels of responsibility without having ever been an official member or leader of any political party.

In 1980, when he was prime minister, a bombing was attempted against the Union Libérale Israélite de France, a synagogue in the rue Copernic, Paris; however the bomb detonated in the street when the Jews attending shabbat were inside the synagogue, and not when they were out; but as a result some non-Jewish bystanders were killed.

On this same show, Barre defended the collaborationist Maurice Papon at his trial, describing him as "a scapegoat".