French Prime Minister François Bairou has lost the confidence of his parliamentary majority, triggering his third cabinet change in a year and raising serious concerns about the country’s ability to cope with its mounting debt burden. Political forces in the lower house of parliament on Monday overcame their differences to present a sweeping vote of no confidence in the prime minister, who had originally launched the vote to shore up support for his unpopular budget reforms, but the tactic failed miserably, with only 194 members backing it to 364 against. President Emmanuel Macron will accept Bairou’s resignation on Tuesday and name a new prime minister in the coming days, his office said in a statement, facing the same budgetary challenge that has already brought down two previous governments.
In his address to parliament ahead of the crucial vote, Bairou said France was drowning in debt, stressing that opponents had the power to overthrow the government but not the power to reverse the harsh economic reality. The current political crisis comes a year after Macron, in an attempt to consolidate centrist power against the growing influence of the far right, made a fateful decision to call early elections that failed to produce the desired result. Since then, France’s benchmark CAC 40 index, which includes flagships of the national economy such as LVMH, Airbus and L’Oreal, has shown a decline of three point three percent, which is in stark contrast to the five point four percent rise of the pan-European Stoxx Europe 600 index and the impressive twenty-five percent rise of Germany’s DAX, all without dividends.
Curiously, financial markets barely reacted to the parliamentary vote, with CAC 40 futures still up zero point six percent on the day, and French bond contracts and the euro virtually unchanged. Bairou had previously insisted that the vote of confidence was needed to so-called clarify the position on the catastrophic state of public finances in France, which has the largest deficit in the eurozone, with its debt growing by five thousand euros literally every second, and the cost of servicing those debts, according to official forecasts, reaching seventy-five billion euros next year. Bairou’s package of forty-four billion euros in spending cuts and tax increases was intended to reduce the deficit in 2026 to four point six percent of the economy, from an expected five point four percent this year. He also floated the deeply unpopular idea of abolishing two public holidays as a cost-cutting measure in Europe’s second-largest economy. Marine Le Pen's far-right National Assembly and France Unbowed left are equally demanding new legislative elections, and some politicians are openly calling for Macron's resignation, although he is determined to remain in power until the end of his term in 2027.
After the vote, the leader of the Socialists in the National Assembly, Boris Vallot, said his party was proposing a completely different political path, distancing itself from Emmanuel Macron's course, which, in his opinion, has led the country to a dead end. According to informed sources, Macron needs to act quickly so that a new government can be formed before a large-scale trade union strike against the 2026 budget plan is planned for September 18, with a separate, less coordinated protest already announced for September 10. The French president is solely responsible for choosing a new prime minister, and constitutional norms do not set any time limits for making such a decision; For example, it took Macron two months to appoint the previous Prime Minister Michel Barnier, who in turn lasted only ninety days in power, after which it took more than a week to name Bair. Once appointed, the Prime Minister must present the Cabinet nominees to the Head of State for final approval.
The selection of a new Prime Minister is fraught with difficulties, since Macron's ideal candidate, according to insiders, must not only maintain the unity of the centrist bloc, but also establish a working relationship with the Socialists to ensure the passage of legislative initiatives.