French Prime Minister François Bayrou talks with French Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau before the result of a confidence vote during an extraordinary session at the National Assembly in Paris on Monday.Benoit Tessier/Reuters
French Prime Minister François Bayrou has lost a vote of confidence in the National Assembly and will be forced out of office, plunging the country into a fresh round of political instability.
President Emmanuel Macron will now have to appoint a new prime minister for the third time in a year. He has ruled out calling an election to resolve the impasse in the 577-seat parliament where no party or coalition has a majority.
His office said in a statement after the vote that Mr. Macron would appoint someone “in the coming days.” Potential candidates include Sébastien Lecornu, the Defence Minister, and Gérald Darmanin, the Justice Minister. Socialist leader Olivier Faure also said on Monday that Mr. Macron could try to form a workable government among leftist parties. But it’s far from certain that any of those options would win majority support.
Mr. Bayrou, who has only been Prime Minister for nine months, triggered Monday’s vote in a bid to win support for his government’s budget, which included €43.8-billion, or $71-billion, in spending cuts, a freeze on social benefits and scrapping two public holidays.
Opinion: France barrels toward chaos as its public debt spirals out of control
His gamble that MPs would lend their support failed miserably amid fierce criticism of the budget from the two main opposition groups — the National Rally, led in parliament by Marine Le Pen, and a left-wing alliance called the New Popular Front.
The final vote was 194 to 364 against the government, which will heap more pressure on Mr. Macron. He will be hard pressed to find someone capable of commanding a majority in the fractious parliament.
During Monday’s debate, Mr. Bayrou told MPs that they faced a “trust test” and that France was addicted to spending. Tough fiscal measures were necessary in order for the country to escape the “inexorable tide of debt that will submerge it in four years,” he added.
Legislators toppled France’s government in a confidence vote on Monday, a new crisis for Europe’s second-largest economy that obliges President Emmanuel Macron to search for a fourth prime minister in 12 months.
The Associated Press
France’s annual deficit hit 5.8 per cent of gross domestic product last year, totaling €168.6-billion, and the nation’s total debt stands at around €3.35-trillion, or 114 per cent of GDP. That’s the third highest debt ratio in the eurozone after Greece and Italy.
Mr. Bayrou argued that his budgetary proposals would bring the deficit down to 5.4 per cent of GDP this year and put the government on track to dip below the EU threshold of 3 per cent by 2029.
“I refuse to allow the balance of public finances to be achieved through the chronic increase in debt,” he told the National Assembly. “Ladies and gentlemen, you have the power to overthrow the government, but you do not have the power to erase reality.”
French President Emmanuel Macron speaks during a press conference last week.LUDOVIC MARIN/Reuters
Many MPs blamed Mr. Macon for the instability. He was elected President in 2017 and re-elected in 2022 on the promise that his new centrist coalition, now called Ensemble pour la République or Together for the Republic, would break the stranglehold the Socialists and Republicans had on the government.
But his popularity has waned in recent years, and Ensemble lost its control of parliament last year after Mr. Macron called a snap election. The result left the National Assembly in the current stalemate and Mr. Macron has so far been unable to find a Prime Minister who can govern for more than a few months.
A recent poll of 1,000 voters published by Le Figaro Magazine found that just 15 per cent of those surveyed had confidence in Mr. Macron. That was the lowest level of support for the President since 2017, according to the pollster Verian. A series of anti-government protests and strikes have also been called for Wednesday, in what critics say will be a strong show of public opposition to Mr. Macron.
If Mr. Macron “does not want to change his policy, then we will have to change the president,” said Mathilde Panot, head of the far-left France Insoumise, or France Unbowed, which has called for higher taxes on corporations and the wealthy.
After the vote, she announced that her party would introduce a motion to impeach Mr. Macron. “We do not want yet another prime minister who would continue the same policy, and the question that is being asked of the country is that of the departure of a president of the Republic who refuses to respect the sovereignty of the people,” she said.
Impeachment is highly unlikely to succeed given the many hurdles that would have to be cleared, including approval by two-thirds of the National Assembly and the Senate, where Insoumise has no representation.
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Support for the National Rally, which has campaigned on slashing France’s financial contribution to the European Union and cutting social benefits for asylum seekers, has been climbing steadily, and the party could be the big winner if Mr. Macron called an election.
Ms. Le Pen, who leads the party’s group in the National Assembly, told MPs on Monday that the collapse of yet another government only proved that Mr. Macron must dissolve parliament. “Everything suggests legally, politically, even morally, that dissolution is not an option, but an obligation,” she said.
Former French Prime Minister Gabriel Attal.Benoit Tessier/Reuters
Gabriel Attal, who leads the Ensemble group in parliament, came to Mr. Macron’s defence and told MPs that the president had been straight with the French public about the seriousness of the country’s financial situation.
“Reducing the debt is not an accounting obsession, it is a vital issue,” he said. “It is not up to the French to resolve the problems of Parliament, but up to Parliament to resolve its problems and the problems of the French.”
There have been calls among some opposition MPs for Mr. Macron to resign. His presidential term ends in 2027 and he is constitutionally barred from seeking a third mandate. Mr. Macron has also taken on a leadership role in Europe, over issues such as the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, which he is unlikely to give up.
“It is a very ambiguous situation,” said Pierre Mathiot, a political-science professor at the Sciences Po university in Lille. “From a French point of view, Macron is unpopular and there’s a kind of hate against Macron. But in an international point of view, Macron is a very important actor. So I think he would not resign.”