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.
By a vote of 364 to 194, François Bayrou, the prime minister, was defeated by an overwhelming majority. Gambling that lawmakers would support his view that France must reduce public spending in order to reduce its debts cost Bayrou dearly for what appeared to be a staggering political miscalculation. Instead, they used Bayrou’s call for a vote to support the 74-year-old centrist appointed by Macron in December. After just under nine months in office, Bayrou’s short-lived minority government was constitutionally required to resign, signaling renewed uncertainty and the possibility of prolonged legislative impasse for France, which is grappling with pressing issues such as budget issues, international conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza, and the shifting priorities of the United States. President Donald Trump. Bayrou’s announcement in August that he would seek a confidence vote on his unpopular budget plans gave Macron two weeks to prepare for the government’s collapse, but no clear front-runner has emerged as a successor. After Gabriel Attal left office as prime minister in September 2024, Michel Barnier, a former Brexit negotiator, was ousted by parliament in December, and Bayrou is now also gone, Macron is looking for a replacement to build consensus in the lower house of the parliament, which is full of people who hate the French leader. On Tuesday, Macron’s office said that he would accept Bayrou’s government’s resignation and name a new prime minister “in the coming days.” As president, Macron will continue to hold substantial powers over foreign policy and European affairs and remain the commander in chief of the nuclear-armed military. However, the 47-year-old president’s domestic ambitions are increasingly in jeopardy. Macron’s shocking decision to dissolve the National Assembly in June 2024, triggering a legislative election that the French leader hoped would strengthen the hand of his pro-European centrist alliance, was the root of the most recent government collapse. But the gamble backfired, producing a splintered legislature with no dominant political bloc in power for the first time in France’s modern republic.Shorn of a workable majority, his minority governments have since lurched from crisis to crisis, surviving on the whim of opposing political blocs on the left and far-right that don’t have enough seats to govern themselves but can, when they team up, topple Macron’s choices.
Confidence vote forces Macron to seek fourth prime minister in 12 months
