France’s government has collapsed after a vote of no confidence on Monday, forcing Prime Minister Francois Bayrou out of office after just nine months on the job.
The 74-year-old had called the vote under article 49 of the French constitution to pressure lawmakers to back his proposal to slash €44 billion ($52 billion) from the 2026 budget in a bid to reduce the country’s fiscal deficit. President Emmanuel Macron’s office said Monday in a statement that he would appoint a new Prime Minister “in the next few days,” who will become France’s fifth Prime Minister in less than two years.
“The biggest risk was not to take one, to let things continue without anything changing, to go on doing politics as usual,” Bayrou told France’s National Assembly before the vote.
“You have the power to overthrow the government, but you do not have the power to erase reality,” he added. “Reality will remain inexorable. Spending will continue to increase and the debt burden—already unbearable—will grow heavier and more costly.
France’s debt crisis
France’s national debt sat at more than 3 trillion euros—114% of its gross domestic product—at the end of the first quarter of 2025, with debt payments set to exceed 100 billion euros by 2029, up from 59 billion in 2024, according to the Cour des Comptes audit office. Meanwhile its budget deficit is almost 169 billion euros—5.8% of its GDP. The European Union has a 3% limit on budget deficits for countries that use the euro.
Bayrou sought to reduce public borrowing from 6.1% of the GDP in 2024 to 2.8% by 2029. The former Prime Minister’s proposal included measures like freezing a significant amount of welfare spending and doing away with two public holidays. Bayrou had argued that young people in France are being burdened with years of debt to accommodate boomers.
But the plan was deeply unpopular, and was voted down with 364 lawmakers against to 194 for. Cutting social spending in France is politically risky. A series of protests were ignited nationwide in January 2023 after Macron raised the retirement age from 62 to 64.
Jordan Bardella, head of French far-right populist party National Rally, which called a failed no-confidence motion against Macron over the pension reform, said on Aug. 25 that his party would “never vote in favor of a government whose decisions are making the French people suffer.”
France’s political crisis
France has also been in political turmoil since Macron called snap parliamentary elections in June last year in an attempt to reject rising political extremism and increase support for the center after the 2024 European Parliament election delivered National Rally a victory. Voters instead delivered gains to both far-right and far-left parties. That resulted in a hung parliament split between the National Rally, the left-wing New Popular Front, and Macron’s Renaissance bloc.
Macron appointed Michel Barnier as Prime Minister in September last year, a decision that came after the Paris Summer Olympics and days of debate between French politicians and which resulted in protests. The government collapsed in December from a no-confidence vote over budgetary disputes for the first time since 1962, and Barnier was ousted after the shortest tenure in the history of the Fifth Republic. The country’s parliament passed an “emergency law” to renew the previous year’s budget and prevent a government shutdown.
Macron then appointed Bayrou, a centrist, as Prime Minister in December, but it was not long before he suffered a similar fate to Barnier.
What comes next
Macron has said he will appoint a new Prime Minister, ruling out the possibility of new elections.
Far-right leader Marine Le Pen called for Macron to dissolve parliament again, which would result in another election that she likely hopes will benefit the National Rally. “A big country like France cannot live with a paper government, especially in a tormented and dangerous world,” she said in the National Assembly after the no-confidence vote. Polls show that a majority of French citizens want snap parliamentary elections.
Macron has also repeatedly ruled out resigning from office before his term ends in 2027, despite polling poorly.
But Bayrou’s removal spells more upheaval for the French government. French far-left and far-right opposition parties hold 330 out of 577 seats in the National Assembly, making consensus difficult. Without a majority, Macron is reportedly looking to create a coalition with the Socialists, while some have speculated he’ll appoint a candidate backed by the left, especially as his last two appointments of centrists—Barnier and Bayrou—have ended in government collapse. Socialist Party President Boris Vallaud told the National Assembly that he would be prepared to govern. But doing so could face a challenge in getting approval from Les Républicains, a liberal-conservative party that is also part of the governing coalition.
Appointing a Prime Minister will also not resolve the instability hanging over the French parliament due to lack of an absolute majority, especially as the new leader would face the immediate task of passing a 2026 budget. French intelligence reportedly expects “Block Everything” street protests to take place this week, as well as union-led hospital and rail strikes later this month.
Macron “needs to act quickly to appoint a new PM before unrest in parliament and on the street … becomes a revolt against him,” Mujtaba Rahman, managing director at consultancy Eurasia group, told the Financial Times. “He also needs to reassure markets that France can still hope to pass a deficit-cutting budget this year.”
Marie Demker, professor of political science at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden, warned in an article by Swedish national wire service, TT News Agency, that there could be even broader implications: an unstable France could affect the European Union’s ability to act decisively, including on defense and economic policy vis‑à‑vis the U.S.
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