PARIS \u2013 <\/p>\n
France’s fourth prime minister in three years, Francois Bayrou faces almost certain defeat in a confidence vote on Monday, tipping the euro zone’s second-biggest economy further into political uncertainty. The government’s collapse looks set to deepen France’s paralysis at a critical time for Europe, which is seeking unity in the face of Russia’s war against Ukraine, an increasingly dominant China and trade tensions with the United States.<\/p>\n
The turmoil also threatens France’s ability to rein in its debt, with the risk of further credit downgrades looming as bond spreads \u2014 a gauge of the risk premium investors demand to hold French debt \u2014 widen. France faces acute pressure to repair its finances, with last year’s deficit nearly double the EU’s 3% limit of economic output and public debt at 113.9% of GDP.<\/p>\n
The confidence vote is slated for Monday afternoon. Despite a frenzy of talks and media appearances since his decision to throw his hat into the ring on Aug. 25 amid tense debates over a budget bill, Bayrou appeared over the weekend to have failed to secure a majority.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PARIS \u2013 France’s fourth prime minister in three years, Francois Bayrou faces almost certain defeat in a confidence…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":406905,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5309],"tags":[34,2000,299,36,37,14882],"class_list":{"0":"post-406904","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-france","8":"tag-emmanuel-macron","9":"tag-eu","10":"tag-europe","11":"tag-france","12":"tag-francois-bayrou","13":"tag-national-rally"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115166722293508480","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/406904","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=406904"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/406904\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/406905"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=406904"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=406904"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=406904"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}