French Prime Minister Michel Barnier’s government has lost a confidence vote in the National Assembly, deepening a political crisis and raising questions about the country’s budget for next year.
A total of 331 legislators in France’s 577-seat lower house of parliament on Wednesday voted to remove 73-year-old Barnier’s centrist minority government.
Far-left and hard-right opposition parties united to pass the motion after Barnier used special powers to push through budget measures without a parliamentary vote.
Following the vote, Parliament Speaker Yael Braun-Pivet confirmed Barnier would now have to “submit his resignation” to President Emmanuel Macron and declared the session closed.
He was expected to tender his resignation and that of his government to the president shortly after.
Reacting to the vote, French far-right leader Marine Le Pen said pressure was now piling up on President Macron even though she was not calling for his resignation, adding Macron alone had the last say on the matter.
Meanwhile, Mathilde Panot, the head of the parliamentary faction of the hard-left France Unbowed (LFI) party, told reporters, “We are now calling on Macron to go,” and urged for “early presidential elections” to solve a deepening political crisis.
The French president will address the nation Thursday evening in a televised speech, the Elysee presidential palace said shortly after the vote concluded.
Barnier, the European Union’s former Brexit negotiator was personally appointed by President Emmanuel Macron as the prime minister in September after a snap election in July resulted in a hung parliament.
His government is France’s first to be toppled in a no-confidence vote in more than 60 years.
Reporting from Paris, Al Jazeera’s Natacha Butler said the vote was a “crushing defeat” for Barnier.
“They were angry with Barnier’s austerity measures in his budget, and that it hit some of the poorest people in France,” she said, adding the country has once again “plunged into another political crisis”.
The left and far right punished Barnier for opting to use special constitutional powers to ram part of an unpopular budget, which sought 60 billion euros ($63bn) in savings in an effort to shrink the deficit, through parliament without a final vote.
France has a public deficit hitting approximately 6.1 percent of its gross domestic product (GDP) and Barnier has been eager to bring the deficit down in line with EU rules, which require countries to have a budget deficit ratio of 3 percent.
What’s next?
France can not hold a new parliamentary election before July.
Any new prime minister would face the same challenges as Barnier in getting bills, including the 2025 budget, adopted by a divided parliament.
Macron could alternatively ask Barnier and his ministers to stay on in a caretaker capacity while he takes time to identify a prime minister able to attract sufficient cross-party support to pass legislation.
A caretaker government could either propose emergency legislation to roll over the tax-and-spend provisions in the 2024 budget into next year or invoke special powers to pass the draft 2025 budget by decree – though jurists say this is a legal grey area and the political cost would be huge.
