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President Emmanuel Macron has called on French lawmakers not to topple Michel Barnier’s government ahead of a no-confidence vote, even as he downplayed the economic risks of the administration’s likely collapse.
The opposition supporting two no-confidence motions on Wednesday “would be a vote of unbearable cynicism”, Macron told journalists travelling with him in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday. “I can’t believe that they’d vote for” the motions, he added.
“The interest of the country is more important than the interest of the parties.”
Debate on the motions, which were brought by the far-right Rassemblement National and the leftist Nouveau Front Populaire coalition, will begin at 4pm Paris time on Wednesday.
Barnier’s minority government does not have the numbers to withstand being voted down by both blocs. If the government falls, Macron will need to name a new prime minister to form a government. Under France’s constitution Macron cannot call fresh elections until next July.
If he loses the vote, Barnier’s time in office will have been the shortest of any premier in France’s Fifth Republic, and his government the first to be ousted by a no-confidence motion since 1962.
Barnier has warned of a financial and economic “storm” should the government collapse without adopting his controversial 2025 budget.
But Macron downplayed those risks, even as investors sent France’s 10-year sovereign bond spreads against benchmark German debt to their widest point in 12 years last week. Borrowing costs briefly surpassed Greece’s before the debt rallied.
“We must not scare people with these things, we have a strong economy,” said Macron in Riyadh. “France is a rich, solid country, which has made many reforms and is maintaining them, which has stable institutions [and] a stable constitution.”
That stability has been put to the test since Macron called and lost snap legislative elections over the summer, resulting in a hung parliament. He appointed Barnier in September in the hope that the former EU Brexit negotiator could muster the parliamentary support needed to pass the budget, despite fractious opposition.
But he encountered stiff opposition to his €60bn worth of tax increases and spending cuts aimed at taming France’s growing budget deficit.
Marine Le Pen and her RN party are poised to make good on their threat to vote down the government for failing to meet all their “red lines” demands on the budget, even after Barnier made some concessions. The NFP has also said the four parties that make it up would back the no-confidence motion.
Asked by reporters if he would consider stepping down ahead of the end of his term in 2027 to break the deadlock, Macron dismissed it as “political fiction”.
“It so happens that if I am before you, it is because I was elected twice by the French people. I am extremely proud of this and I will honour this trust with all my energy until the last second that it can be useful to the country,” he said.
Parliament illustration by Aditi Bhandari
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