Prime Minister François Bayrou is expected to lose a motion of no confidence in his government today in France’s National Assembly. Bayrou tabled the motion against his own minority government in an attempt to pressure opposition parties into supporting his budget, amid mounting doubts over its passage and large-scale strikes planned for Wednesday. However, nearly all major opposition parties have now refused to back the motion, making its passage highly unlikely.
Bayrou’s budget was contentious for its attempts to address France’s debt crisis, including proposals to abolish public holidays, raise taxes, and freeze government spending. France has exceeded the EU’s 3% debt-to-GDP ratio target almost every year of Macron’s presidency, peaking at 8.9% in 2020. Efforts to reverse this trajectory have been hampered by weak GDP growth in recent years, which has resulted in lower tax revenues.
As a result, France now has one of the largest debt burdens in the world, exceeding 110% of GDP. This week alone, French bond yields hit a 14-year high. The situation deepens the crisis, as it will necessitate further austerity measures to balance the budget—yet additional austerity makes the budget even less likely to pass. This is especially true given that Macron’s main opponents, both on the left and the right, have campaigned on platforms that call for increased borrowing.
This problem is likely to be exacerbated today as a result of the expected defeat of the confidence motion in Bayrou’s government, as markets interpret the political paralysis as evidence of the French state’s inability to address its debt crisis. Bayrou is Macron’s fifth Prime Minister since 2020, his fourth in two years. His predecessor, Michel Barnier, was appointed following contentious snap elections in which Emmanuel Macron’s centrist Ensemble coalition and the left-wing New Popular Front informally cooperated through a tactical strategy known as the “republican front” to prevent Marine Le Pen’s National Rally from winning an absolute majority in the National Assembly.
However, this cooperation was short lived, as Barnier would rely on RN’s abstention in no confidence votes tabled by the Left to remain in power. A large aspect of Barnier’s relation to the right in this regard was his intense rhetoric on migration, including calls for a moratorium on non-EU migration into France, which Le Pen called an “ideological victory”. However, in December 2024, Barnier lost a motion of no-confidence over his use of Article 49.3 to push through his budget, which included 60 billion euros in spending cuts, in an attempt to address France’s debt crisis.
Today’s confidence motion comes against the backdrop of Politico reports that French lawmakers have begun discussing the possibility of an IMF bailout—an option the finance minister has refused to rule out—and Macron’s popularity sinking to a historic low. Although public opinion strongly favours new snap elections, polling suggests, while they would likely strengthen Rassemblement National, this would still fall short of breaking the parliamentary deadlock.
Macron’s position appears increasingly tenuous even within his own camp, as allies grow wary of association with his increasingly unpopular presidency ahead of the next presidential election, in which he is constitutionally barred from running again. Commentators note that the ongoing volatility is likely to strengthen the Right in this presidential election.
Notably, however, in the run-up to the last parliamentary elections, with Le Pen’s National Rally leading in the polls, the European Central Bank effectively issued warnings over her populist policy platform. Just before the vote, the ECB threatened to sanction France for breaching deficit and debt rules—potentially imposing fines—and signalling that it would not intervene to purchase French debt in the event of market turmoil. Suggesting this crisis will continue, regardless of Bayrou’s successor.
Dean Céitinn