No-confidence vote topples French government, plunges country into chaos
The support of Marine Le Pen’s far-right lawmakers was key to the motion, which made this the shortest-serving administration in the modern French republic.
The trouble is, there’s no obvious cast of characters who could form a stable government. New legislative elections that might alter the political dynamics can’t happen before summer. And without a government in place, France couldn’t address the gaping hole in its public finances or resolve uncertainty that has the potential to spook markets and weigh on other euro-zone economies.
“We have reached a moment of truth and responsibility," Barnier said during Wednesday’s parliamentary debate ahead of the vote. “This reality will not disappear by the magic of censure motions."
The turmoil in France — just weeks after the collapse of the German government — threatens to leave two of Europe’s most powerful nations rudderless, as European officials warn they must prepare for a blow if President-elect Donald Trump unleashes a trade war or slashes aid for Ukraine.
How France got here
The crisis came to a head this week over the government’s budget-cutting plans. But it goes back to French President Emmanuel Macron’s gamble on early legislative elections, which kept the far-right National Rally party out of government but gave Le Pen, its leader, a kingmaker role in a bitterly fragmented political landscape.
In France, the president’s pick of prime minister must win lawmakers’ approval. From the outset, Le Pen said her party would oppose any candidate from the left-wing alliance that had garnered the most seats in the July election, though short of a governing majority.
Barnier — a traditional conservative and the European Union’s former Brexit negotiator — was selected as a veteran politician who could navigate the minefield and secure Le Pen’s tacit support. But his government has been under a near-constant threat of collapse since taking office in September, with its fate in the hands of Le Pen.
She managed to secure significant concessions in budget talks. Barnier, though, was intent on hefty spending cuts to regain control of France’s spiraling deficit and debt burden. On Monday, after he bypassed the lower house of Parliament to force through a budget bill, both Le Pen’s party and the left-wing alliance called for a no-confidence vote.
During Wednesday’s debate, Socialist lawmaker Boris Vallaud accused Barnier of having “locked himself into a humiliating tête-à-tête” with the far right.
Le Pen’s calculus
The budget fight has allowed Le Pen to flex her political muscles and publicly stand up for populism. In a fiery address during Wednesday’s debate, she said her decision to back a no-confidence vote was about stopping a budget that "takes the French hostage, and particularly the most vulnerable, low-income pensioners, sick people, poor workers, the French considered too rich to be helped but not poor enough to escape the tax bludgeoning.”
But the timing of her move has raised questions.
The leader of the Euroskeptic, anti-immigrant National Rally is known to have the French presidency in her sights. The country’s next presidential vote isn’t due until 2027, and Macron said as recently as Tuesday that he would serve out his elected second term “with all my energy until the last second to be useful to the country.” But some analysts say Le Pen may hope a crisis would corner him into resigning early.
Le Pen is also facing the complication of a trial accusing her, and members of her party, of embezzling millions of euros of European Parliament funds. Prosecutors have sought a five-year ban on public office that would prevent her from running for president in 2027. A verdict is expected in late March.
Under Le Pen’s leadership, National Rally has sought to distance itself from its origins on the neofascist fringes and show voters that it is a broadly appealing party that could capably govern. But many French politicians are convinced that the trial “has derailed her strategy to make herself and her party appear constructive and capable of making the compromises needed in government,” said Mujtaba Rahman, managing director for Europe at the Eurasia Group consultancy.
What happens next
A government collapse could push the country deeper into uncharted territory.
Macron could ask Barnier’s government to stay on in a caretaker role, while the president tries to find another prime minister who wouldn’t immediately be censured by a majority of lawmakers. That’s no easy task.
Meanwhile, the country faces an end-of-the-month deadline to sort out its budget and avert a government shutdown.
Under French law, a government can seek legislative approval to roll a previous year’s budget into a new year, temporarily keeping public workers paid and operations running until a new budget can be adopted. But there are debatable legal questions about what powers can be used by an overthrown government in an interim role. A move by the caretaker government to push a budget through, or a move by Macron to invoke the president’s exceptional powers to impose a budget, would trigger a political and constitutional mess.
What could the economic fallout be?
The political crisis in France is stirring fears of a financial one, as investors fret over the fate of a series of curative measures meant to address the country’s woefully high budget deficit — which, at above 6 percent of gross domestic product, is far above the E.U.’s 3 percent guideline.
France saw a buildup in its debt and deficit after spending generously to protect incomes during the covid era and shield people from the rise in energy prices that followed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Now, a budgetary morass would take a growing toll on France at a time when Europe is facing other economic headwinds, including a weak German economy next door.
In a symbolic moment on Monday, French bond yields — the interest paid on debt — even surpassed those of the euro zone’s former problem child: Greece, the same country that sparked a region-wide debt crisis in the aftermath of the 2008 global financial crisis.
French government spokeswoman Maud Bregeon, in an interview with Le Parisien, described the risk of “a Greek-style scenario.” Such talk, for now, appears to have been largely a negotiating tactic. France’s debt-to-GDP ratio is over 110 percent of GDP — the third-highest ratio in Europe. But the French situation differs starkly from Greece’s at the time of its debt crisis, which saw a debt-to-GDP ratio above 200 percent at its peak.
Adam Posen, president of the Peterson Institute for International Economics, called a financially catastrophic French default a “remote” prospect and said there is low risk of France’s woes spreading to other European countries anytime soon. But should the country’s political crisis and budget impasse continue, it could drive up the cost of the country’s debt and have a dampening effect beyond France’s borders, while ratcheting up a tense debate in Brussels over fiscal responsibility.
In the meantime, France is constrained on long term solutions. Its already-high tax rate gives it limited room to raise revenues and address its budget woes, while deep cuts in public benefits could trigger social unrest and boost populists on the far-right and far-left.
“There are couple of switch points in which things could blow up in the next two to six months, but probably they get through it,” Posen said. “The issue is more in the two- to three-year horizon.”
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