France’s govt collapses as PM Bayrou loses confidence vote

French President Emmanuel Macron has suffered a major political setback as Prime Minister François Bayrou on Monday lost a confidence vote in the Parliament. Bayrou was ousted overwhelmingly in a 364-194 vote against him, just eight months after he was appointed Prime Minister.
Bayrou is expected to submit his resignation to French President Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday morning. The 74-year-old is the third Macron-appointed Prime Minister to be forced out of office in the past two years. His predecessor Michel Barnier also lost a no-confidence vote last December just three months after assuming office, making him the shortest-serving French PM ever.
Gabriel Attal, who held the French Prime Minister’s post before him also did not have a long stay and held the office only for eight months between January and September 2024.
According to the Elysée Palace President Macron will name the successor of Bayrou ‘in the next days.’
Bayrou had called the confidence vote unexpectedly to try to win parliamentary support for his strategy to lower a deficit that stands at nearly double the European Union’s 3% ceiling and to start tackling a debt pile equivalent to 114% of GDP.
But opposition parties were in little mood to rally behind his planned savings of 44 billion euros ($51.51 billion) in next year’s budget, with an election for Macron’s successor looming in 2027.
Earlier, ahead of the vote 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.
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 the debt burden — already unbearable — will grow heavier and more costly.”