French President Emmanuel Macron faces one of the trickiest moments of his presidency after his prime minister, François Bayrou, was toppled in a bruising confidence vote in the National Assembly, leaving the French leader with no easy path to form a stable government.
The defeat of Bayrou, Macron’s fourth prime minister in barely two years, underscored the depth of the gridlock since the president gambled on dissolving parliament last year. Macron’s centrist bloc has been stranded without a majority, while the far-right and the far-left smell blood, demanding new parliamentary elections.
The numbers in the National Assembly were unforgiving: 364 out of the 577 deputies voted against his government, and only 194 backed him.
Now Macron must decide whether to appoint yet another ally to the Hôtel de Matignon, reach out to the Socialists for an unlikely coalition, or risk new snap elections that could catapult Marine Le Pen’s far-right Rassemblement National into power. Each option is fraught with risk.
Bayrou himself went down swinging in his valedictory address to the National Assembly, saying he was ready to die on the hill of an unpopular cost-cutting budget. With debt at nearly 114% of GDP and deficits far above the European Union ceiling, he repeated his mantra from the past quarter century that France desperately needs to balance its books or face a fiscal vortex.
He warned that France’s “standing in the world and lifestyle” could not be maintained without painful deficit cuts. He attacked what he called the “easy solutions” of left and right alike, dismissing both the scapegoating of immigrants and the idea that the rich could alone bear the burden.
“The biggest risk was not to take one at all, to continue…with politics as usual, to carry on… until we reached the cliff-edge,” Bayrou told deputies, his voice rising as he warned that France’s youth faced the “slavery” of debt.
His appeals failed to win over opponents. Le Pen said the vote heralded “the end of the agony of a phantom government” that was “merely administering” rather than governing France. She urged Macron to dissolve parliament and call fresh elections, calling dissolution “not an option, but an obligation.”
On the left, Cyrielle Chatelain of the Greens was equally scathing. “Your departure is a relief,” she told Bayrou across the chamber. “If it weren’t for the worry of what comes next, it would be almost satisfying.” She demanded a government that would ditch austerity in favour of “fiscal justice.”
Socialist leader Olivier Faure dangled a non-aggression pact earlier in the week, suggesting his party could agree not to topple a government that refrained from using constitutional shortcuts to ram bills through. But when it came to Bayrou’s €44bn package of spending cuts and tax rises, his deputies joined the chorus of no-confidence. Faure has also pitched himself as a prime minister, while offering no more than €22bn in spending cuts – and a new tax on France’s super-rich.
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Outside the chamber, markets are already flashing warning lights. France’s borrowing costs have crept above those of Greece, and ratings agencies warn that political paralysis could put the eurozone’s second-largest economy on a dangerous path.
Macron has tried to shift responsibility onto the opposition, warning that “if they were to choose disorder, they would bear a heavy responsibility in the current delicate geopolitical moment.”
But critics say the chaos is of his own making, the consequence of his ill-fated election gamble in 2024. The president has ruled out his own resignation, despite polls showing two-thirds of French voters want him gone.
That leaves him scouring a shrinking list of potential prime ministers. Defence minister Sébastien Lecornu, a close ally with ties to the right, is one contender. Former Socialist premier Bernard Cazeneuve is another name in the mix, though bringing the left on board would mean undoing many of Macron’s reforms. However, the wobbly churn at the top risks paralysing France further. “You’ll maybe have a government that can last three weeks, three months, but it’s not sustainable,” Ipsos pollster Mathieu Gallard has warned.
As for Bayrou, he looked resigned, if defiant. “They are the victims who will have to pay the debt all their lives,” he had said of France’s youth just days earlier. “All of this for the comfort of the boomers, who believe everything is fine.”
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