After the latest government collapse, France struggles to find a way forward

PARIS — French Prime Minister François Bayrou presented his resignation to President Emmanuel Macron Tuesday morning, after lawmakers voted down his economic plans in a no-confidence ballot on Monday.

Before Monday’s vote, Bayrou said France’s big deficit and high debt levels made difficult economic decisions necessary, and urged members of Parliament to face the facts: “You have the power to topple the government, but you don’t have the power to erase reality,” he said.

He lost the vote 364 to 194 — a decisive defeat, and bigger than expected.

Political parties on the far left and far right celebrated Bayrou’s defeat and said a replacement should be chosen from their ranks. Jean-Luc Mélenchon, head of the France Unbowed party, called it a “victory for the people,” and an end to what he said were Macron’s “policies for the rich.”

Marine Le Pen, leader of the far-right National Rally, went further, calling for new early elections: “The new majority resulting from these elections must be able to draft a budget, so that our country has a budget.”

But that decision is up to Macron to take, and he has only said he will choose a new prime minister in the coming days. It’s expected he will choose someone who will pursue his business-friendly, centrist agenda.

It will be the fourth time he picks a new head of government in just a year and a half — and it won’t be easy, says French political journalist Thierry Arnaud.

“We’re going to enter a kind of a gray political area,” he says. “Macron’s task is to try to find somebody — a man or a woman — who will be able to negotiate their way through this very difficult parliament to find a majority. And it’s not obvious that he can succeed at that.”

Macron’s failed gamble

In June 2024, Macron dissolved the French Parliament after the National Rally captured a shocking 31.4% of the vote in elections for the European Parliament.

He was taking a gamble, calling for early national elections, clearly hoping the far-right breakthrough would frighten some voters into backing his own majority, so that he might govern more easily.

The gamble failed.

No party emerged with a majority. And now, even though the National Rally controls the biggest voting bloc, political scientist Corinne Mellul says there is little chance Macron would name someone from the far-right.

“It’s out of the question,” she says. “I would say it’s a point of honor. Because in both terms, he ran on a platform of keeping the National Rally at bay and doing whatever it takes. So appointing a prime minister from the party would be acknowledging that he failed.”

Mellul believes Macron has, in one sense, already failed, because the National Rally has never done better. It’s the most popular political party in France, with a third of polled voters regularly saying they would cast a ballot for it.

Arnaud says Macron’s options are limited, and with an approval rating of around 15%, he risks losing control of the situation.

“Under those circumstances it’s very difficult to be politically in charge of what happens next in the country,” he says.

So how did Macron, who is so active on the international stage, get here?

A problem of trust

Stéphane Rozès, a pollster who has worked for three French presidents, says Macron never built up enough political capital at home.

“He did not even bother to campaign in 2022,” he says, referring to the presidential election Macron won that year. “He ran on fear of the war in Ukraine and fear of the far right. He did not make a contract between himself and the French.”

Macron also pushed through most of his economic reforms without popular support, often passing measures using an emergency clause in the constitution instead of relying on a majority in parliament.

The progress he did make is now coming undone, says political analyst Nicole Bacharan.

“During his first term, Macron worked very hard at reforming our economy and social system and making it more efficient and in the second term he’s breaking everything,” she says.

There is talk that Macron could name a politician from the center-left, like Socialist parliamentarian Olivier Faure, who has said he is ready.

“The problem with him is that he’s never going to agree to a program that will seriously address the debt, unless it includes taxing the rich, and that is not going to get him a majority,” says Mellul.

In France’s fractured political environment, Mellul believes it will be hard for a premier from any party to get a majority to pass a budget. That spells disaster, says Douglas Webber, emeritus professor of political science at the international business school lNSEAD, south of Paris.

“Without a new budget and without some kind of measures to either raise taxes or to cut spending, the French government deficit will carry on growing. And France will come under a great deal of pressure on the bond markets and have to pay a higher interest rate on any kind of money that it borrows,” says Webber.

Far-left leader Mélenchon told French public TV on Monday that France did not have a debt problem. His far-left party says it would increase social spending and lower the retirement age.

The Bayrou government lasted just nine months. His predecessor, Michel Barnier, lasted 90 days.

As France awaits its next prime minister, Bacharan says many people are in despair over the uncertainty this has brought on the country.

“There is no trust in our politicians, no trust in our political system and no trust in the economy,” she says. And of course no trust in the president of the Republic.”