France's PM loses confidence vote, toppling his government

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. 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 Bayrou - a 74-year-old centrist who was appointed by Macron last December.

The demise of Bayrou’s short-lived minority government - now constitutionally obliged to submit its resignation to Macron after just under nine months in office - heralds renewed uncertainty and a risk of prolonged legislative deadlock for France as it wrestles with pressing challenges, including budget difficulties and, internationally, wars in Ukraine and Gaza and the shifting priorities of US President Donald Trump.

Earlier in the day, Bayrou warned that France is risking its future and its influence by racking up trillions in state debts that are "submerging us,” pleading for belt-tightening in a last-ditch effort to save his job.

Bayrou, 74, painted a dramatic picture of the European Union’s No.2 economy becoming beholden to foreign creditors and addicted to living beyond its means.

He castigated opponents in the National Assembly who were preparing to topple his minority government, ganging up against him despite their own sharp political differences.

"You have the power to overthrow the government, but you do not have the power to erase reality,” 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 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 Macron has had two weeks to prepare for the expected government collapse since 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 now Bayrou, 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, 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 47-year-old president’s ambitions are increasingly facing ruin.

The root of the latest expected government collapse was Macron's stunning 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 gamble 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 that don’t have enough seats to govern themselves but can, when they team up, topple Macron's choices.

Bayrou, too, rolled the dice by calling the confidence vote, a decision that quickly looked like a staggering miscalculation by the political veteran as left-wing and far-right legislators vowed to seize the opportunity to bring down his government, seeking to increase pressure on Macron.

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.

"The greatest risk was to not take one, to let things go on without changing anything, to go on doing politics as usual,” he said. "Submission to debt is like submission through military force. Dominated by weapons, or dominated by our creditors, because of a debt that is submerging us - in both cases, we lose our freedom.”

The 577-seat National Assembly interrupted its summer recess to convene for the extraordinary session of high political drama.

Macron's opponents are seeking to leverage the latest crisis to push for a new legislative election, pressure for Macron's departure or jostle for posts in the expected next government.

Far-right leader Marine Le Pen is calling for Macron to again dissolve the National Assembly, seemingly confident that her National Rally party and its allies would win a majority in another round of an unscheduled legislative election, positioning it to form a new government.

Associated Press