France is staring into the unknown as the minority government of the prime minister, Michel Barnier, faces near-certain defeat in a no-confidence vote that could dramatically intensify the political crisis in one of the EU’s key member states.
If the vote on Wednesday is carried, Barnier’s administration, which took office only in September, would be the first in France to be ousted with a motion of no confidence since 1962. Its fall, at the hands of the far-right and leftwing parties, would be a significant blow to Europe weeks before Donald Trump returns to the White House.
The vote risked making “everything more difficult and more serious”, a sombre Barnier told MPs on Tuesday, adding that France’s situation was already “difficult in budgetary and financial terms” and “very difficult in economic and social terms”.
In a television interview late on Tuesday, Barnier warned there was “a lot of tension in France” but said that for the country to regain political stability he should remain in office.
He added: “The moment is serious. It is difficult, but the stakes are not impossible.”
The hardline interior minister Bruno Retailleau said that if the government was toppled it would “throw France and the French into an insufferable situation”. Those backing the motion were playing “Russian roulette” with its future, he said.
A parliamentary debate is due to start at 4pm local time, followed by a vote roughly three hours later. Two separate no-confidence motions have been tabled, by the far-left and far-right opposition, with the former widely predicted to pass.
The president, Emmanuel Macron, who is on a visit to Saudi Arabia, is expected to return to France for what the media have described as a “moment of truth” that risked “plunging France into the great political and financial unknown”.
France’s political crisis, brewing over the past three months, finally erupted on Monday when Barnier said he would push the social security component of his fragile government’s 2025 budget through parliament without a vote.
The constitutional measure allowing him to do so, known as article 49.3, offers MPs the chance to challenge the government’s move through a no-confidence motion voted on within 48 hours. If the vote is successful, the government is out.
“Blocking this budget is, alas, the only way the constitution gives us to protect the French people from a dangerous, unfair and punitive budget,” Marine Le Pen, of the far-right National Rally (RN), the largest single party in parliament, said on Tuesday.
Barnier, appointed by Macron after snap June elections returned a lower house divided into three roughly equal blocs without a clear majority, tried to win MPs’ backing for a belt-tightening budget to restore France’s dire finances.
His proposals included tax increases and public spending cuts totalling about €60bn (£50bn) aimed at reducing the country’s public-sector deficit to about 5% of GDP, down from 6.1% this year – more than double the ceiling permitted in the eurozone.
Despite a range of concessions from the veteran conservative prime minister, both the left-leaning New Popular Front (NFP) alliance and the RN, which together have enough MPs to unseat the government, are due to present no-confidence motions.
Le Pen has confirmed that her party will vote for the NFP’s motion, tabled by the radical left Unbowed France (LFI), but the far-right party’s own no-confidence motion was not expected to find enough support on the left of the national assembly.
France’s finance minister, Antoine Armand, told France 2 public television that opposition MPs would be “damaging” the country by ousting the government. “Who will bear the consequences?” he asked. “First and foremost, the French.”
If Barnier’s government does fall, it would be the shortest-lived of any administration since the start of the Fifth Republic in 1958. Although the prime minister would have to offer his resignation, Macron could ask him to stay on in a caretaker capacity.
The president would then have to nominate a new premier, but that could well not come before next year. France’s constitution does not permit parliament to be dissolved twice in the space of a year, so there can be no new elections before July.
A caretaker government would in principle be able to pass special emergency budget legislation that would roll over spending limits and tax provisions from this year to next, meaning there would no immediate risk of a US-style government shutdown.
Although LFI and its allies have consistently contested Barnier since he took office, Le Pen’s RN – which in effect holds the government’s fate in its hands – has until now refrained from pulling the trigger by voting with the left-leaning opposition parties.
The decision to do so also represents a gamble for the RN’s figurehead, who is awaiting judgment in a case of alleged misuse of EU funds and, if found guilty in March, could be ruled ineligible for France’s next presidential election, due in 2027.
Le Pen has spent years trying to present the RN as a responsible party of government and while polls suggest a majority of its voters would back a move to bring down the government, more moderate conservatives may well be put off.
