France | The government risks falling in a vote on Wednesday

(Paris) On the eve of a vote in the Assembly which threatens to bring down the French government, Prime Minister Michel Barnier called on Tuesday for responsibility to avoid political and budgetary chaos, with President Emmanuel Macron saying for his part not being able to believe in such a scenario.

Tuesday, on the television channels TF1 and France 2, Mr. Barnier considered “possible” a “reflex of responsibility where, beyond political differences […] we say to ourselves that there is a higher interest”, the “national interest”.

The President of the Senate Gérard Larcher, for his part, called for a “start” from the deputies to “overcome the resentments”.

Mr. Macron affirmed for his part that he could not “believe in the vote of censorship”. “The interest of the country is more important than the interest of the parties,” he said on the sidelines of a visit to Saudi Arabia.

Mr. Macron denounced an “unbearable cynicism” of the RN and a “complete loss of bearings” of the socialists.

The head of state also brushed aside calls for his resignation from his opponents.

He had until then remained silent in public on this crisis which could force him to look for a new prime minister, even though he does not have a majority in the Assembly.

On Monday, Mr. Barnier engaged the responsibility of the executive by having the Social Security budget adopted without a vote, as provided for in an article of the Constitution, exposing his government to a motion of censure while ensuring that he had been “at the end of dialogue” with political groups.

Multiples concessions

Unless there is a spectacular reversal, the motion has every chance of being approved, the left and the far right having announced that they would vote for it. The debate will take place at 4 p.m. (10 a.m. Eastern time) and the first result is expected around 8 p.m. (2 p.m. Eastern time), according to several parliamentary sources.

By being part of Macron’s “catastrophic continuity”, Michel Barnier “could only fail”, Marine Le Pen reacted in the evening.

“The fall of Barnier is confirmed,” said the head of deputies of the radical left party La France Insoumise (LFI), Mathilde Panot.

Appointed on September 5 by Mr. Macron to find a way out of the crisis after a parliamentary dissolution and elections with disastrous results for his majority in July, the 73-year-old center-right leader lasted three months thanks to “support without participation of the RN », the far-right National Rally party: but “what will bring it down is precisely that the RN will have stopped supporting it”, judged the socialist deputy Arthur Delaporte.

While France sees its public deficit slipping, the former European commissioner and EU negotiator for Brexit is under the crossfire of oppositions who reject the austerity efforts requested in 2025 and accuse, for the left, Mr. Macron for having given too many tax gifts to the richest and to businesses.

Michel Barnier made numerous concessions to mollify the far right, agreeing for example to suspend the reduction in drug reimbursement, but that was not enough.

He said Tuesday evening that the leader of the far right, Marine Le Pen, was “in a sort of one-upmanship”.

“Censoring this budget is, unfortunately, the only way the Constitution gives us to protect the French from a dangerous, unjust and punitive budget,” assured Mr.^me Le Pen on the social network

Social protest

Voting for censorship, “it’s our duty,” said RN deputy Jean-Philippe Tanguy, while the lack of public money sharpens social protest.

In Lyon, taxis blocked certain road access to protest against a reduction in the cost of transporting patients. University presidents, for their part, mobilized on Tuesday in the face of the “untenable” budgetary restrictions requested.

On Thursday, the hunt for savings and the tightening of rules on sick leave will lead many teachers to strike, while civil aviation asked airlines to cancel some of their flights in France, due to a call for a strike in the public service.

On Tuesday, ministers took turns on radio and television to raise the risk of “chaos”. “It is the country that we are putting in danger,” worried the Minister of the Economy Antoine Armand.

“Do we really want chaos? Do we want an economic crisis that will affect the most vulnerable? », Launched the Minister of the Interior Bruno Retailleau.

The Paris Stock Exchange ended slightly higher on Tuesday, with investors focusing on the advantages of a budgetary status quo in the event of censorship.

The adoption by the National Assembly of such a motion would be a first in France since 1962. The Barnier government would then become the most short-lived in the history of the Fifth Republic.

If the executive falls, France would sink further into the political crisis born from the dissolution of the Assembly in June, with the added risk of seeing France’s borrowing rates increase further.

The country is recording a serious slippage in its public deficit this year, expected at 6.1% of GDP, and only expects to be able to respect the European rule of 3% again in 2029.

“The situation is difficult on the budgetary level” and “very difficult on the economic and social level”, censorship “will make everything more difficult and more serious”, Mr. Barnier warned before the Assembly.