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The French prime minister, François Bayrou, is expected to be ousted in a confidence vote on Monday afternoon, plunging the eurozone’s second biggest economy into political crisis.
Opposition parties from the left to the far right have made clear they will vote against the 74-year-old centrist, meaning he and his minority government would fall after only nine months in office.
The centrist president, Emmanuel Macron, is then likely to face the challenge of appointing his third prime minister in a year, and the fifth since he began his second term in office in 2022.
As head of state with authority on foreign policy and national security, the president directly appoints a prime minister to run domestic affairs. But after Macron called a snap parliamentary election last year, the national assembly has been divided into three blocs – left, centre and far right – with no absolute majority, creating a form of political deadlock and disagreement on the budget. This means there is no certainty that a new prime minister would be safe from a similar swift ousting.
Macron could also decide to call a new snap parliamentary election, although he has said he is reluctant to do so.
Bayrou shocked even his centrist allies by calling the surprise confidence vote, saying he needed backing from parliament for austerity measures to reduce the public debt.
A long-term Macron ally, Bayrou was struggling to get support for his unpopular plan for a €44bn (£38bn) budget squeeze and austerity programme to reduce France’s public debt. His budget proposals, including scrapping two public holidays and freezing most welfare spending, were contested across the political spectrum.
Bayrou will make a speech to parliament on Monday afternoon appealing for support and giving his take on the state of the nation and French public debt. This will be followed by speeches from the leaders of every parliamentary grouping, before a ballot of lawmakers.
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Marine Le Pen, the head of the parliamentary group of the far-right National Rally party, which is planning to vote against Bayrou, said on Sunday: “This crisis was provoked and fuelled by President Emmanuel Macron and all those who have served him. Today, because of them, France is the sick man of Europe.”
Le Pen, who was found guilty in March of embezzling European parliamentary funds through a fake jobs scam and banned from running for office for five years, will find out on Monday the date of her appeal trial next year.
Lawmakers on the left, which won the most seats in last year’s parliament election but was far off an absolute majority, have said Macron should appoint a leftwing prime minister.
Bayrou would be the second prime minister to fall after the snap election: the rightwing Michel Barnier was ousted after three months in December.
“[Macron] can’t go against the results of the polls a third time,” Marine Tondelier, the head of the Green party, told the broadcaster BFM on Saturday, saying a leftwing appointment was the only solution.
But the rightwing interior minister, Bruno Retailleau – the head of Les Républicains, which had propped up Bayrou’s government – said at a party meeting on Sunday: “There is no way we will accept a socialist prime minister.”
