French Prime Minister Michel Barnier has been ousted just months into his tenure as lawmakers from the left and the right unite in a stunning no-confidence vote, throwing the nation into unprecedented political chaos.
A total of 331 out of 577 lawmakers voted against Barnier’s fragile government, seizing their opportunity to topple the veteran politician – and renowned negotiator – after his attempt to ram through part of his government’s annual budget on Monday.
His is the first French government to be defeated in a no-confidence motion since 1962, and Barnier is now set to become France’s shortest-serving prime minister in history.
Barnier’s cabinet is now expected to serve in a caretaker capacity until French President Emmanuel Macron names new leadership.
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But that will prove a delicate task, with the increasingly vulnerable president forced to appease lawmakers on both extremes of French politics.
Macron had appointed Barnier to lead a minority government after a snap election, called by the president in the summer, split France’s parliament into three factions, each well short of a majority.
The situation had immediately appeared untenable, and it collapsed at the first major hurdle on Monday, when Barnier was forced to use a constitutional mechanism that bypassed a vote in the legislature on his 2025 budget.
That allowed rival lawmakers on the left, who had long vowed to bring him down, to call a confidence motion in response, and the far-right National Rally supported the motion to see it through on Wednesday. The far right had also called a similar motion.
Pleading his case during Wednesday’s debate in the National Assembly, Barnier told lawmakers he was “not afraid,” but warned that removing him would make “everything more difficult.”
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But he was forced to watch as lawmaker after lawmaker called for his ouster.
Marine Le Pen, the leader of the far-right National Rally, said during the debate that Barnier’s “stubborn adherence to dogma and doctrine prevented him from making the slightest concession, which would have avoided this outcome.”
In the day before the vote, Barnier accused the far right of political blackmail, saying that they had agreed to his concessions on electricity tax hikes and medical aid for undocumented people before demanding more.
The far-right leader has been the chief antagonist throughout the Macron era, challenging him in two presidential elections and now dispatching the prime minister he handpicked to settle a simmering crisis.
She placed the blame for the fall of Barnier’s government squarely on Macron’s shoulders.
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“He’s the one most responsible for the current situation,” she said following the vote. Macron “will assume his responsibilities, he will do what his reason and his conscience dictate to him,” she said in an interview.
Macron will address the French nation at 8 p.m. on Thursday evening, the Elysee Palace announced.
France is now hurtling towards the end of a remarkably volatile year without a prime minister or a budget. Macron is required to pick a new prime minister, but it is difficult to envisage a candidate who would expect the support of both the leftists and the far-right.
A budget must also be passed before a December 21 deadline; if that deadline is missed, the government could still legislate a “fiscal continuity law,” which would avoid a shutdown by allowing the government to collect taxes and pay salaries, with spending capped at 2024 levels, according to the S&P Global Ratings credit rating agency.
A further snap election is not possible because the current parliament is required to sit until June, one year after the last vote.
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Instead, Macron is set to face intensifying calls for his resignation – a demand that lawmakers such as Le Pen may seek to make an ultimatum in return for supporting a prime ministerial candidate.
Macron is increasingly unpopular after his remarkable gambit following the European elections in June, when he responded to continent-wide gains for the far-right by calling early legislative elections in France.
The murky results of that nationwide poll saw parties to the left and right squeeze Macron’s centrist bloc, with all three falling well short of a parliamentary majority.
Macron is halfway through his second and final term as president, but the results of the snap election have severely complicated the final stages of his time in power and diminished his authority at home and abroad.
Barnier’s financing bill, which sparked his downfall, includes €60 billion ($63 billion) worth of tax hikes and spending cuts aimed at bringing the country’s budget deficit down to 5% next year, according to the government’s calculations. Some of the measures are hugely unpopular with opposition parties, such as delaying matching pension increases to inflation.
“At last, the Barnier government has fallen, as has his violent budget, as we knew that it would, for a very simple reason: It was a provocation of French voters,” said Mathilde Panot, president of the LFI-NFP left-wing bloc that had put forward the motion, immediately following the vote.
On Monday, worries about the impact of the political maelstrom on France’s public finances briefly pushed the government’s borrowing costs above those of Greece.
France’s government debt is approaching 111% of gross domestic product (GDP) – a level unmatched since World War II, according to S&P Global Ratings – partly as the state spent big to cushion the economy from the Covid-19 pandemic and the energy crisis sparked by Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
