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.
Prime Minister François Bayrou was ousted overwhelmingly in a 364-194 vote against him. Mr. Bayrou paid the price for what appeared to be a staggering political miscalculation, gambling that lawmakers would back his view that France must slash public spending to repair its debts. Instead, they seized on the vote that he called to gang up against Mr. Bayrou – a centrist who was appointed by Mr. Macron last December.
The demise of Mr. Bayrou’s short-lived minority government – now constitutionally obliged to submit its resignation to Mr. Macron after just under nine months in office – heralds renewed uncertainty and a risk of prolonged legislative deadlock for France. The government is wrestling with pressing challenges, including budget difficulties and, internationally, wars in Ukraine and Gaza and the shifting priorities of U.S. President Donald Trump.
“You have the power to overthrow the government, but you do not have the power to erase reality,” Mr. Bayrou said in a speech to the National Assembly before the confidence vote that he called. “Reality will remain inexorable. Spending will continue to increase and the debt burden – already unbearable – will grow heavier and more costly.”
At the end of the first quarter of 2025, France’s public debt stood at 3.346 trillion euros, or 114% of gross domestic product. Debt servicing remains a major budget item, accounting for around 7% of state spending.
Although Mr. Macron has had two weeks to prepare for the expected government collapse since Mr. Bayrou announced in August that he’d seek a confidence vote on his unpopular budget plans, no clear front-runner has emerged as a likely successor.
After Gabriel Attal’s departure as prime minister in September 2024, followed by former Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier’s ouster by parliament in December and Mr. Bayrou now threatened, too, Mr. Macron again faces an arduous hunt for a replacement to build consensus in the parliament’s lower house that is stacked with opponents of the French leader.
As president, Mr. Macron will continue to hold substantial powers over foreign policy and European affairs and remain the commander in chief of the nuclear-armed military. But domestically, the president’s ambitions are increasingly facing ruin.
The root of the latest government collapse was Mr. Macron’s 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. But the plan 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. These don’t have enough seats to govern themselves but can, when they team up, topple Mr. Macron’s choices.
Mr. Bayrou conceded that putting his fate on the line was risky, but said that France’s debt crisis compelled him to seek legislative support for remedies, in the face of what he called “a silent, underground, invisible, and unbearable hemorrhage” of excessive public borrowing.
Mr. Macron’s opponents are seeking to leverage the latest crisis to push for a new legislative election, pressure for Mr. Macron’s departure, or jostle for posts in the next government.
This story was reported by The Associated Press.
