French PM Michel Barnier submitted his resignation today after far-right and leftist lawmakers passed a no-confidence measure yesterday amid contentious budget negotiations. President Emmanuel Macron is expected to name a new PM quickly, potentially even today in a scheduled address to the nation. (New York Times; AP)
Barnier’s fall was in many ways overdetermined. Macron chose him in September because he was one of the few viable political figures who could placate Macron’s minority parliamentary coalition comprising the center and center right, while also having a chance of mollifying the opposition enough to pass legislation on a case-by-case basis. But with Macron having alienated the leftist New Popular Front, NFP, coalition by skipping over it for the PM nomination following July’s elections, that ultimately left Barnier beholden to Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally, or RN, at a time when France is running short on time to address its financial troubles.
France needs to address its high deficit and debt-to-GDP ratio in order to comply with EU guidelines, and constitutionally the 2025 budget must be passed before the end of the year. Even after conceding to some of the demands made by Le Pen to soften the blow on the French population—and reduce public services to immigrants—Barnier’s proposal still included more than $40 billion in spending cuts and $20 billion in tax hikes.
That was too brutal for the NFP, and evidently the concessions were not enough to keep the RN from joining the leftist coalition in passing the no-confidence measure against Barnier.
The vote leaves France’s political landscape once again in a state of uncertainty and presents Macron with the same conundrum he faced back in July. The difference now is that there is a race against the clock, so while Macron is expected to name a new PM within a few days, if not sooner, it’s not clear that doing so will actually change the landscape of budget negotiations in parliament. Even a pathway that involves peeling the center left off from the far left to form a broader coalition across the center may not solve anything, because the center left is also largely opposed to the budget cuts proposed in Barnier’s budget.
Ultimately, the developments this week underscore how France’s political crisis has now become an institutional crisis. The French political system functions best when it has a strong president and a prime minister of the same party who enjoys a parliamentary majority, and it can function just fine with a weakened president co-existing with an opposition prime minister who enjoys a parliamentary majority. Right now, it has neither: Macron is severely weakened, and no single coalition has the votes to muster a majority.
Three months ago, in choosing Barnier as PM, Macron believed he had found a way out of the impasse that he created for himself in calling for July’s snap elections. Now, it’s clear that wasn’t the case, and it appears increasingly unlikely that he has a pathway out at all.
