French lawmakers are all but certain to oust the government with a no-confidence motion on Wednesday, plunging the euro zone’s second-biggest economic power deeper into political turmoil.
Barring a last-minute surprise, Prime Minister Michel Barnier’s government will be France’s first to be forced out by a no-confidence vote in more than 60 years, at a time when the country is struggling to tame a massive budget deficit.
If the vote does indeed pass, President Emmanuel Macron plans to name a new prime minister very quickly, possibly even before the grand reopening of Paris’s Notre-Dame Cathedral at the weekend, according to sources in Macron’s camp, including parliamentary sources.
That would avoid leaving a hole at the heart of the European Union at a time when Germany is also weakened and in election mode, weeks before U.S. President-elect Donald Trump re-enters the White House.
But any new prime minister would face the same challenges as Barnier in getting bills, including the 2025 budget, adopted by a divided parliament. There can be no new parliamentary election before July.
The debate on the no-confidence motions was set to start in late afternoon, with the result expected around 1830-1900 GMT.
In a TV interview on Tuesday, Barnier said he still believed his government could survive the vote. But far-right National Rally (RN) chief Jordan Bardella said such optimism showed that the government was “completely out of touch with what is happening in the country”.
“This government is dangerous for my country,” he told France Inter radio. “We will vote for the no-confidence motion.”
Senior left-wing lawmakers also confirmed that their camp would vote to oust Barnier. The left and far right combined have more than enough MPs for the no-confidence vote to go through.
Barnier’s interior minister, Bruno Retailleau, was downbeat.
“Nothing’s over until the vote but we can see we’re headed towards censure (of the government),” he told CNews.
NO-CONFIDENCE VOTE PUTS BID TO CUT BUDGET DEFICIT AT RISK
Macron, who won a second mandate in 2022, precipitated the crisis by calling the snap parliamentary election in June.
His term as president runs until mid-2027 and he cannot be forced out by parliament, but the RN and the hard left have already been saying he should resign as he faces his biggest crisis since the Yellow Vest popular unrest of 2018-2019.
Since Macron called the election, France’s CAC 40 .FCHI has dropped nearly 10% and is the heaviest loser among top EU economies. The single currency is down nearly 4%.
Political uncertainty is already hitting France’s services sector, a monthly survey showed.
“The positive signals … that were seen over the summer, partly due to the Olympics, are now a thing of the past,” Hamburg Commercial Bank economist Tariq Kamal Chaudhry said after seeing the HCOB purchasing managers’ index for France’s service sector.
Barnier’s draft budget, which angered both the left and far right, had sought to cut the fiscal deficit, which is projected to exceed 6% of national output this year, with 60 billion euros ($63 billion) in tax hikes and spending cuts. It sought to squeeze the deficit down to 5% next year.
Barnier says the consequences of voting him out will be catastrophic for state finances, but RN lawmaker Laure Lavalette told TF1 TV: “There is no reason for this to lead to major chaos. Don’t play with fears … it’s not all going to crumble.”
Bond investors are likely to spare France the dire financial “storm” Barnier has warned of, but the fallout from the political crisis will hurt businesses, consumers and taxpayers, economists and experts say.
“This is a slow-burning crisis which will lead to an ongoing widening of spreads and an ongoing deterioration of sovereign creditworthiness,” said Union Investment’s head of fixed income and FX, Christian Kopf, who is underweight on French debt.
