The French government is facing a no-confidence vote after Prime Minister Michel Barnier pushed through budget measures without parliamentary approval.
If the measure passes on Wednesday, as is expected, it would mark the first time a French government has been removed this way in more than 60 years.
The National Assembly is due to vote after debating two motions introduced by the left-wing camp and far-right nationalists, which together count more than 330 politicians. A no-confidence motion requires at least 288 of 574 votes to pass.
The far-right National Rally (RN) of three-time presidential candidate Marine Le Pen is expected to vote for the motion put forward by the left, giving it enough numbers to pass.
The session is due to start at 4pm (15:00 GMT), with voting expected hours later. President Emmanuel Macron is set to return to France from a state visit to Saudi Arabia during the day.
Macron, whose term ends in 2027, has dismissed the threat of his potential removal from office amid the turmoil, saying such discussions were “make-believe politics”.
“I’m here because I’ve been elected twice by the French people,” Macron was quoted as saying by French media. “We must not scare people with such things. We have a strong economy.”
But the toppling of the Barnier government after just three months in office would leave the president with few options over how to go forward and who to appoint in his place.
No new elections can be called for a year after the previous legislative polls. Macron could ask Barnier to stay on in a caretaker role as he seeks a new prime minister, which could happen only next year.
Asked on French television if there was a chance his government could survive Wednesday’s vote, Barnier replied: “I want this and it is possible. It depends on the MPs,” he said.
The latest political turmoil follows snap elections called by Macron in June in a bid to halt the surge of the far right, which left no party or faction in parliament with a majority.
Some observers have suggested that Le Pen, 56, is seeking to bring down Macron before his term ends by ousting Barnier. The far-right leader is embroiled in a high-profile embezzlement trial and, if found guilty in March, could be blocked from participating in France’s next presidential election in 2027.
She has insisted that the party’s stance was entirely due to a budget that would make the French poorer. “Censuring the budget is for us the only way the constitution gives us to protect the French,” Le Pen told reporters as she arrived in parliament.
If the government falls, it would be the first successful no-confidence vote since a defeat for Georges Pompidou’s government in 1962, when Charles de Gaulle was president.
