President Emmanuel Macron on Thursday sought a new prime minister to prevent France from sliding deeper into political turmoil after Michel Barnier’s government was ousted in a historic no-confidence vote in parliament.
Contemporary France’s shortest-serving premier, Barnier met Macron at the Elysee Palace to submit his resignation after Wednesday’s parliamentary defeat forced his government to step down.
The vote was the first successful no-confidence action since a defeat for Georges Pompidou’s government in 1962, when Charles de Gaulle was president.
“The prime minister today submitted the resignation of his government” to Macron, who has “taken note” of the resignation, the Elysee said.
Barnier and his ministers remain “in charge of daily business until the appointment of a new government”, it added.
It remains unclear when the new prime minister will be appointed.
But, unlike on previous occasions, the president appears in a hurry to appoint the new premier to avoid a vacuum, according to multiple sources who spoke to AFP.
Macron, who only returned late Wednesday from a state visit to Saudi Arabia, was to meet both lower-house National Assembly speaker Yael Braun-Pivet and her upper-house Senate counterpart Gerard Larcher before giving an address to the nation at 1900 GMT.
Braun-Pivet, a member of the president’s centrist faction, urged Macron to quickly choose a new premier, saying that France could not be allowed to “drift” for long.
Limiting any impression of political chaos is all the more important for Macron who on Saturday will host world leaders — including US president-elect Donald Trump — for the reopening of the Notre Dame cathedral in Paris after a devastating 2019 fire.
– ‘Macron alone’ –
A majority of lawmakers on Wednesday supported the no-confidence vote proposed by the hard left and backed by the far right headed by Marine Le Pen .
Barnier’s ejection in record time comes after snap parliamentary elections in June resulted in a hung parliament. No political force was able to form an overall majority and the far right held the key to the government’s survival.
The trigger for Barnier’s ouster was his 2025 budget plan including austerity measures unacceptable to a majority in parliament, but which he argued were necessary to stabilise France’s finances.
On Monday he forced through a social security financing bill without a vote, but the ousting of the government means France is still without a budget.
“Macron alone in the face of an unprecedented political crisis,” said the Le Monde daily in its headline.
“France probably won’t have a 2025 budget,” said ING Economics in a note, predicting that the country “is entering a new era of political instability”.
Moody’s, a ratings agency, warned that Barnier’s fall “deepens the country’s political stalemate” and “reduces the probability of a consolidation of public finances”.
The Paris stock exchange fell at the opening on Thursday before recovering to show small gains. Yields on French government bonds were again under pressure in debt markets.
Strike calls across transport, education and other public sector services were maintained on Thursday despite the disappearance of the austerity budget that has prompted anger.
– Early elections? –
New legislative elections cannot be called until a year after the previous ones in summer 2024. But while Macron has more than two years of his presidential term left, some opponents are calling on him to resign to break the deadlock.
“We are now calling on Macron to go,” said Mathilde Panot, head of the parliamentary faction of the hard-left France Unbowed (LFI) party, urging “early presidential elections”.
Macron has vehemently rejected such a scenario, calling it “political fiction”.
Taking care not to crow over the government’s fall, Le Pen said in a television interview that, once a new premier was appointed, her party “would let them work” and help create a “budget that is acceptable for everyone”.
She also, conspicuously, did not call on Macron to resign.
Barnier is the fifth prime minister to serve under Macron since he came to power in 2017. Each successive premier has served for a shorter period and, given the composition of the National Assembly, there is no guarantee that Barnier’s successor would last any longer.
Loyalist Defence Minister Sebastien Lecornu and Macron’s centrist ally Francois Bayrou have been touted as possible contenders, as has former Socialist premier and interior minister Bernard Cazeneuve.
Bayrou, who leads the MoDem party, had lunch with the president at the Elysee, a source close to him told AFP.
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