Prime Minister Michel Barnier of France faces a no-confidence vote this week after he pushed through a budget bill without a final parliamentary vote on Monday, making a government collapse increasingly likely.
The move angered opposition parties, and lawmakers from both a left-wing alliance and Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally party swiftly filed motions for no-confidence votes. They are expected as early as Wednesday.
That prospect of the government’s falling — and worries that France might not pass a budget by years’ end — have rattled financial markets, sharply increased the country’s borrowing costs and further deepened the turmoil that has gripped the country since snap elections last summer yielded no clear parliamentary majority.
Mr. Barnier, a veteran center-right politician, used a constitutional provision to push the bill through without a vote because, despite a series of concessions, he could not win approval from Ms. Le Pen, who has played the role of kingmaker since the snap elections last summer. His own coalition of centrists and conservatives did not have enough votes to pass the budget bill.
Mr. Barnier and his cabinet, both appointed by President Emmanuel Macron just three months ago, are now on borrowed time. If they fall this week — as many expect — they will become the most short-lived government in the history of France’s Fifth Republic, which was founded in 1958, and the first to fall to a no-confidence vote since 1962.
Mr. Macron will remain as president, but he will need to appoint a new prime minister, mere weeks before a constitutionally mandated deadline of Dec. 21 to finalize next year’s budget. That would throw the country into uncharted political, legal and economic territory.
Even before the no-confidence motions were filed, the political instability was causing widespread anxiety.
“We won’t have a budget, we won’t have a government — there is no sense of the day after,” said Nicole Bacharan, a political scientist in Paris. “We have no idea what will happen.”
The legislation that was to be considered on Monday is a social security bill, one of three different budget bills that are currently making their way through Parliament.
In the lead-up to the parliamentary session on Monday, Ms. Le Pen and Mr. Barnier had engaged in a game of chicken. Ms. Le Pen dangled the threat of a no-confidence motion ever more vocally if Mr. Barnier did not accede to her demands on the budget including cutting funding for assistance to immigrants and scrapping a measure to freeze state pensions below inflation levels. Mr. Barnier warned of “serious turbulence on the financial markets” and troubles ahead if the country reached the new year without a budget — warnings that Ms. Le Pen has dismissed as fear-mongering and “fake news.”
Mr. Barnier made some concessions to Ms. Le Pen. He announced that he was scrapping an increase in electricity taxes and reducing health care coverage for undocumented people. On Monday, just hours before a potential vote, Mr. Barnier made another gesture to Ms. Le Pen by promising that the government would not reduce medication reimbursements.
But it was not enough.
“Mr. Barnier didn’t want to respond to our 11 million voters,” Ms. Le Pen told reporters at the lower house, where she is a lawmaker. “So everyone must shoulder their responsibilities.”
Mathilde Panot, a top lawmaker for the left-wing France Unbowed party, told reporters that Mr. Barnier tried to “escape censure by wallowing in dishonor with the National Rally.”
“This Wednesday,” she added, “he’ll have both dishonor and censure.”
Mr. Barnier beseeched lawmakers in Parliament on Monday, before announcing he was forcing through the budget. “I don’t think the French would forgive us for putting individual interests ahead of the nation’s future,” he said.
Vincent Martigny, a political analyst, said that he didn’t see a way the Barnier government could survive because it would be hard to stop the momentum once politicians riled themselves up in anger.
“There’s a kind of a coalition of chaos — a combination of anger, of desire, of a political murder that comes to a point in which people don’t even think about the next step,” said Mr. Martigny, a political science professor at the University of Nice, Côte d’Azur. “They think about doing it.”
Many in France believed a no-confidence vote was the inevitable outcome of last summer’s snap election called by Mr. Macron. The final vote resulted in a bitterly fragmented National Assembly, France’s lower house of Parliament.
No party or bloc was even close to having a majority. Instead, the house is divided into three main blocs: the anti-immigrant, nationalist National Rally and its allies; an alliance of four left-wing parties called the New Popular Front; and a tenuous coalition of centrists and conservatives who support Mr. Barnier.
Mr. Barnier was appointed by Mr. Macron in an attempt to break the deadlock that has gripped the lower house since then. But the move infuriated the New Popular Front, which has the most seats and is deeply opposed to the government’s economic policies.
The left has vowed since then to topple Mr. Barnier’s government, but it needs the far-right’s votes to do so. But Ms. Le Pen has been relishing her newfound power and until Monday was not willing to try to bring down the government.
Without enough votes to get bills through Parliament on its own, Mr. Barnier’s government has been forced to rely on her tacit support. Still, he has not wanted to overtly cede too much either, since many government members were elected to block the far right from gaining power, said Benjamin Morel, a lecturer in public law at Panthéon-Assas University in Paris. At the same time, Ms. Le Pen has been demanding explicit recognition of her party and its ideas.
“It’s really about symbolism,” said Mr. Morel. “But that symbolism has profoundly important electoral impacts.”
The budget was the government’s first major test. To add to the pressure, France already has one of the highest ratios of debt to economic output in the euro area, as well as a growing deficit that has provoked a reprimand from the European Union. In response, Mr. Barnier has shouldered the unpopular task of attempting to cut the budget by 60 billion euros ($63 billion).
According to recent polls, the majority of French public opinion is opposed to passing an austerity budget requiring spending cuts and increased taxes, and a small majority wants the Barnier government to fall.
Mr. Barnier could have let the bill go to a vote on Monday. It would probably have failed, continuing the legislative process but doing little to break the political deadlock in the lower house. Under the Constitution, Mr. Macron cannot dissolve the National Assembly and call new legislative elections before July 2025.
So barring major concessions made to his opponents, Mr. Barnier has few other options than to force through his budget bills.
To do so, he invoked Article 49.3 of France’s Constitution, which allows the government to push a bill through the lower house of Parliament without a vote. It is meant to give the executive branch stronger control, but also exposes it to a no-confidence motion. Detractors view it as an undemocratic tool to strong-arm lawmakers.
Monday’s legislation was the first of the three budget bills that have the potential of triggering the government’s fall. A second, smaller bill adjusting 2024 finances is expected to be voted on later this week. Finally, the main government budget for 2025 is expected to come to a vote around Dec. 20.
If the government falls this week, all of those bills fall with it.
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