{"id":407538,"date":"2025-09-08T10:09:10","date_gmt":"2025-09-08T10:09:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/407538\/"},"modified":"2025-09-08T10:09:10","modified_gmt":"2025-09-08T10:09:10","slug":"french-pm-francois-bayrou-expected-to-be-ousted-in-confidence-vote-france","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/407538\/","title":{"rendered":"French PM Fran\u00e7ois Bayrou expected to be ousted in confidence vote | France"},"content":{"rendered":"

The French prime minister, Fran\u00e7ois Bayrou, is expected to be ousted in a confidence vote on Monday afternoon, plunging the eurozone\u2019s second biggest economy into political crisis<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Opposition parties from the left to the far right have made clear they will vote against the 74-year-old centrist, meaning he and his minority government would fall after only nine months in office.<\/p>\n

The centrist president, Emmanuel Macron<\/a>, is then likely to face the challenge of appointing his third prime minister in a year, and the fifth since he began his second term in office in 2022.<\/p>\n

As head of state with authority on foreign policy and national security, the president directly appoints a prime minister to run domestic affairs. But after Macron called a snap parliamentary election<\/a> last year, the national assembly has been divided into three blocs \u2013 left, centre and far right \u2013 with no absolute majority, creating a form of political deadlock and disagreement on the budget. This means there is no certainty that a new prime minister would be safe from a similar swift ousting.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Macron could also decide to call a new snap parliamentary election, although he has said he is reluctant to do so.<\/p>\n

Bayrou shocked even his centrist allies by calling the surprise confidence vote<\/a>, saying he needed backing from parliament for austerity measures to reduce the public debt.<\/p>\n

A long-term Macron ally, Bayrou was struggling to get support for his unpopular plan for a \u20ac44bn (\u00a338bn) budget squeeze and austerity programme to reduce France\u2019s public debt. His budget proposals, including scrapping two public holidays<\/a> and freezing most welfare spending, were contested across the political spectrum.<\/p>\n

Bayrou will make a speech to parliament on Monday afternoon appealing for support and giving his take on the state of the nation and French public debt. This will be followed by speeches from the leaders of every parliamentary grouping, before a ballot of lawmakers.<\/p>\n

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Marine Le Pen, the head of the parliamentary group of the far-right National Rally party, which is planning to vote against Bayrou, said on Sunday: \u201cThis crisis was provoked and fuelled by President Emmanuel Macron and all those who have served him. Today, because of them, France is the sick man of Europe<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Le Pen, who was found guilty in March of embezzling European parliamentary funds<\/a> through a fake jobs scam and banned from running for office for five years, will find out on Monday the date of her appeal trial next year.<\/p>\n

Lawmakers on the left, which won the most seats in last year\u2019s parliament election but was far off an absolute majority, have said Macron should appoint a leftwing prime minister.<\/p>\n

Bayrou would be the second prime minister to fall after the snap election: the rightwing Michel Barnier was ousted<\/a> after three months in December.<\/p>\n

\u201c[Macron] can\u2019t go against the results of the polls a third time,\u201d Marine Tondelier, the head of the Green party, told the broadcaster BFM on Saturday, saying a leftwing appointment was the only solution.<\/p>\n

But the rightwing interior minister, Bruno Retailleau \u2013 the head of Les R\u00e9publicains, which had propped up Bayrou\u2019s government \u2013 said at a party meeting on Sunday: \u201cThere is no way we will accept a socialist prime minister.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The French prime minister, Fran\u00e7ois Bayrou, is expected to be ousted in a confidence vote on Monday afternoon,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":407539,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5309],"tags":[2000,299,36],"class_list":{"0":"post-407538","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-france","8":"tag-eu","9":"tag-europe","10":"tag-france"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115168134003640668","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/407538","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=407538"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/407538\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/407539"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=407538"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=407538"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=407538"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}