In the search for a prime minister in France, Emanuel Macron following the result of the vote in the National Assembly that led to the fall of Michel Barnier’s government. The result marks the first time a French government has lost a confidence vote since 1962. The French president will deliver a speech tonight at 21:00 (local time).
In the wake of the result, the leader of the parliamentary group of the far-right National Rally Marine Le Pen yesterday called on the French president to take responsibility, but did not explicitly call for his resignation. Instead, she said she intends to let the new prime minister work so that he can come up with a state budget acceptable to all.
In a different vein, the leader of the left-wing party of France’s Insurgent France Jean Luc Mélenchon called for Emmanuel Macron’s resignation, saying that “even if he appoints a Michel Barnier every three months as prime minister, he will not be able to stay in the presidency of the republic for the next three years.”
French lawmakers passed a no-confidence vote against the government, throwing the European Union’s second-biggest economic power deeper into a crisis that threatens its capacity to legislate and tame a massive budget deficit https://t.co/Ix9m2yeWy1 pic.twitter.com/qpvky7uNwA
– Reuters (@Reuters) December 5, 2024
On the other hand, Socialist Party Secretary Olivier Faure did not raise the issue of the president’s resignation and called on Macron to listen to the French and appoint a prime minister coming from the left.
The radical left calls on President Macron to resign
The radical left-wing party “France Untouchable” (LFI) has called for the resignation of President Emmanuel Macron, following the French National Assembly’s vote in favour of a motion of censure against Michel Barnier’s government. LFI parliamentary group leader Matilde Pannot demanded “that Emmanuel Macron step down”, calling for “early presidential elections”.
The future of Macron, whose term ends in 2027, is not, however, linked to the collapse of the Barnier government.
What’s happening now
France faces a period of deep political uncertainty and risks entering the new year without a government or budget after opposition to Barnier’s 2025 budget plans to reduce France’s deficit led to yesterday’s vote.
So what could French President Emmanuel Macron do next
It is reported that he could appoint a new prime minister very quickly, according to sources in his camp.
One source told Reuters news agency that he wants to appoint a prime minister before the ceremony to reopen Notre Dame Cathedral on Saturday, which U.S. President-elect Donald Trump is expected to attend.
Donald Trump is expected to be joined by President Donald Trump, who is expected to be elected by the President of the United States, Donald Trump.
However, any new prime minister will face the same challenges as Barnier in terms of getting bills, including the 2025 budget, passed by a fragmented parliament.
The candidates for prime minister
These are some of the names floating around Paris for the next prime minister.
Bernard Casneve, 61: Former French prime minister and interior minister under Socialist President Francois Hollande.
Sevastian Le Corneille, 38: An accomplished politician who in 2022 became the youngest defence minister since the French Revolution. He is a Macron loyalist.
François Bayrou, 73: The veteran centrist leads the MoDem party, a key ally of Macron in parliament.
Jean Castex, 59: Former prime minister under Macron, known for his southern French accent and administrative skills. He currently heads RATP, the state-owned company that operates the Paris metro.
The clearest path for Macron to be able to appoint a new prime minister who is able to form a government and pass a budget before the end of the year would be to give in to the far-right’s demands for a budget.
However, that would mean abandoning efforts to reduce France’s huge budget deficit.
Macron could ask Barnier and his ministers to remain as a service government to carry out day-to-day tasks. That would buy him time to find a prime minister who could attract enough bipartisan support to pass the legislation.
A caretaker government could propose emergency legislation that would overturn spending limits and tax provisions from 2024.
Alternatively, he could invoke special powers to pass the 2025 budget plan by ordinance, however, legal experts say this is a legal grey area. Doing so would also cause further political turmoil.
The danger for Macron is that his opponents will vote down one prime minister after another.
His opponents say the only meaningful way to end the political crisis is for him to resign. However, he has insisted he will serve out the remainder of his term until 2027.
Why was the vote held?
The vote of no confidence against Barnier was prompted by strong opposition to his proposed 2025 budget.
This week, he decided to use special powers to push through his budget after failing to get the support of MPs. The decision angered the National Rally party and the left-wing alliance New People’s Front (NFP), both of which tabled no-confidence motions against him.
France is struggling to tame a huge budget deficit, which is projected to exceed 6% of national output this year. Mr Barnier’s budget sought to reduce the budget deficit with 60 billion euros (£49.7 billion) in tax rises and spending cuts.
His goal was to reduce the deficit to 5 percent next year.
France under EU pressure
In his last speech before the vote, Barnier said: “As this mission may soon come to an end, I can tell you that it will remain an honor for me to have served France and the French with dignity.
“This motion of no confidence… will make everything more serious and more difficult. Of that I am sure.”
France is under pressure from the European Union to reduce its colossal debt. The country’s deficit is estimated to rise to 7 percent next year without drastic adjustments.
Political instability could drive up French interest rates, deepening the debt even further.
Markets in turmoil after fall of Barnier government
French futures in bond markets fell, losing the rise they had been recording after the result of the vote that ended in the fall of the government in France. The euro against the dollar trimmed earlier gains and traded little changed around $1.0514.
UBS’s head of European rates strategy, Reynou de Bauc, said the collapse of the government should not cause French bond spreads to widen significantly from current levels as the market is already “fairly priced”.
“Investors have a much better understanding of the complexity of the budget process and understand that the constitution has safeguards to prevent a US-style shutdown,” he said. “Moreover, the French bond market remains very liquid with a long maturity profile.”
On the budget, the fall of Barnier and the government means that “all their legislative pending issues fall with them,” according to Mujaba Rahman, managing director for Europe at Eurasia Group.
An emergency budget is likely to be passed later this month, effectively extending the 2024 tax legislation until the 2025 budget is agreed, Rahman told CNBC. However, the timing is important for the appointment of a new prime minister, as the 2025 budget cannot be approved by a caretaker government. That puts pressure on Macron to quickly select a new prime minister.
On Monday, concerns 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 public debt is approaching 111% of gross domestic product (GDP) – a level unprecedented since World War II, according to S&P Global Ratings – in part as the state has spent heavily to cushion the economy from the Covid-19 pandemic and the energy crisis triggered by Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
The timeline of the vote
Only three months of Michel Barnier’s tenure in France lasted, which collapsed on Wednesday when the New Left Front’s impeachment motion was voted through.
The Front’s deputies but the National Rally, Marine Le Pen’s party, voted in favour of the motion.
In particular, 331 deputies voted in favor. At least 289 votes were needed to approve the proposal, while the left and far-right have a total of 332 votes.
A second motion was tabled against the government by the Le Pen party. This was preceded by a discussion of this one by the Front as the larger parliamentary formation. However, given the support of the two major factions, the discussion of the second proposal was considered unnecessary.
In any case, this is one of the shortest prime ministerial terms in France in recent decades and one that will weigh heavily on Barnier’s posterity. More importantly, the result threatens to put France into a period of prolonged political instability.
The debate in the National Assembly
The debate began yesterday at 17:30 GMT on the motions of censure from the New Popular Front of the Left and Marine Le Pen’s National Rally. The Left’s proposal was discussed first and put to a vote as coming from a larger party.
Given the support of two major factions, the Left’s proposal was almost certain to pass, barring a shocking political contingency.
Michel Barnier, in his speech closing the debate, after recalling the very complex context of public finances, said that “the truth will be revealed in every government”. “The debt will always be there,” he continued.
After criticizing Marine Le Pen, the prime minister put her in the crosshairs again. “We don’t have the same concept of patriotism,” the prime minister said.
Earlier in her remarks, the National Rally leader said “We are facing a moment of truth” and promised an end to the “ephemeral Barnier government”. Her party, she also said, would help bring that end.
She added that the French government had not gone far enough in reaching compromises with her. “We only got crumbs,” she said and accused Barnier of intransigence.
However, Le Pen said she was “not happy” to support the impeachment motion from New Popular Front. “The institutions are forcing us to mix our votes with those of the far left,” she said.
The National Assembly was also addressed by former Prime Minister, Gabriel Atal, who said National Rally MPs were making “a mistake before history” by voting for the motion of censure
Atal condemned the “sad spectacle” of recent weeks and denounced “the alliance between the LFI and the RN being forged”. “French politics is sick and neither on the far left nor on the far right will the French be able to find the antidote,” he said: “I think what the French are asking for is less noise and more action.”
In remarks after the result was announced, Matilda Pannot, a member of the France Untouchable, the main faction of the New Left Front, said the Barnier government “was a challenge” given the outcome of the July 7 election. The now short-lived government of the Fifth French Republic will be remembered as the one that made a series of concessions to Le Pen’s party to avoid losing power, she said.
In the same vein, the head of the Socialist group said the impeachment motion showed the “failure of the Barnier method”. The government has never sought “the facile compromise with the left.”
Three-month term
It was the inglorious end of a government that had the task of rescuing France from the crisis it had entered after the European elections. In the end, as Politico notes, Barnier’s brief tenure will be remembered as a failure of immense proportions.
He had taken over on September 5 with a difficult task: to help calm a storm that threatened France and the eurozone. A man who had served four terms as a minister and two more as a commissioner, as well as a Brexit negotiator, was asked to pass a budget in a country already running large deficits.
For a while, it gave the impression that Barnier could pull it off. Expectations were high, but possibly the image we had of Barnier was “inflated”.
However, despite the tacit acceptance from Marine Le Pen and her party, Barnier failed to get the consensus he was seeking on the important issues, particularly on the budget.
On Tuesday, Barnier made a last-ditch effort to win consensus from the far-right, asking MPs to “show responsibility”. A call that, when made at a time when motions of censure have been tabled, looks more like a resignation than a plea from a prime minister.
On Wednesday, given that the Left Front and Le Pen would vote for impeachment, the “moment of truth” arrived, as Marine Le Pen said during the debate on the impeachment motion from the Left.
Barnier became the first prime minister since 1962 to lose his post to a motion of impeachment. The blow to his posterity will be great: he managed to prevent the expansion of Brexit populism in Europe, but he lost “within a seat” in the French parliament.
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