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Early September is known in France as La Rentr\u00e9e, when children go back to school and adults return to work after the summer holiday. This year the French are returning to yet another political crisis, too. On Monday, Prime Minister Fran\u00e7ois Bayrou lost a confidence vote<\/a> in the National Assembly in Paris, triggering his ouster. Later this week, President Emmanuel Macron is expected to appoint a new prime minister\u2014the fifth in two years. Bayrou had called for Monday\u2019s vote to build momentum for his plans to rein in government deficits with spending cuts and tax increases. Those efforts are now paused, and the political uncertainty to follow could ripple across the continent and beyond. Below, Atlantic Council experts shed light on what\u2019s happening in the City of Light.<\/p>\n Click to jump to an expert analysis:<\/strong><\/p>\n Charles Lichfield: Bayrou\u2019s failed plan to cut spending reveals a political division between the old and young<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n J\u00f6rn Fleck: France\u2019s political instability will be felt in Brussels and Berlin, too<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n Lisa Homel: Facing constraints at home, Macron is likely to focus even more on foreign policy<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n Bayrou\u2019s failed plan to cut spending reveals a political division between the old and young<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\n Bayrou will resign after losing a vote of confidence that he himself had called. He knew he would lose but decided to preempt a parliamentary budget process that was also doomed to end in failure and probably end his premiership as well. After all, this is what happened to his predecessor Michel Barnier less than a year ago. \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Bayrou has not tried to obfuscate the fact that French deficit spending is unsustainable. His draft budget included forty billion euros of savings and other measures that were meant to set France on course to bring its annual deficit under 3 percent of gross domestic product (GDP)\u2014the point at which, with growth and inflation, the debt-to-GDP ratio stops increasing\u2014by 2029. The\u00a0idea of eliminating two public holidays with no wage increases was particularly unpopular.\u00a0<\/p>\n Less deserving of praise has been Bayrou\u2019s reluctance to build any kind of consensus with other parties over the summer. At the helm of a minority government, this was compulsory.\u00a0Still, since Bayrou called the vote of confidence that would seal his fate two weeks ago, his frankness on the French social model has been very refreshing. Politicians like Bayrou who belong to France\u2019s shrinking political center rely on the votes of the retired to stay in office. Along with demographics, this explains how ever more resources have been diverted to funding generous pensions\u2014often to the direct detriment of vital public services like education, policing, and defense.\u00a0<\/p>\n At seventy-four years old, Bayrou has suddenly become an unlikely champion of younger voters who do not benefit from such largesse and will have to deal with the debt burden these policies leave behind. He has spent the past two weeks arguing that the system is too skewed toward \u201cBoomers<\/a>\u201d and must be changed. For this alone, Bayrou deserves credit.\u00a0<\/p>\n France\u2019s borrowing costs continue to creep up. They are above Greece\u2019s and are closing in on Italy\u2019s. Markets\u2019 eyes are peeled for the next Fitch sovereign rating decision scheduled for September 12. For now, we shouldn\u2019t expect volatility of the kind we experienced during the eurozone periphery crisis. Euro-denominated French debt is still desirable because there isn\u2019t much German debt to go around. It is worth bearing in mind, however, that this is about to change. Berlin\u2019s 2026 budget plans a tripling of borrowing compared to this year\u2019s.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u2014Charles Lichfield<\/a> is the deputy director and C. Boyden Gray senior fellow, of the Atlantic Council\u2019s GeoEconomics Center.<\/p>\n France\u2019s political instability will be felt in Brussels and Berlin, too<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\n Monday\u2019s vote of no confidence and the impending resignation of Bayrou will not be welcome news in Brussels and the rest of Europe. The ensuing political instability in France risks distracting, if not detracting from Macron\u2019s undoubted leadership in building meaningful European commitments to security guarantees and a reassurance force for Ukraine, which could help keep US President Donald Trump engaged in pressing Russia on a peace deal.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n When it comes to European defense, those in Brussels who favor more cooperation at the level of the European Union (EU) will have a weaker ally in Paris as the union seeks to translate its defense-industrial ambitions into actual budgetary commitments and industrial policies. Few, especially in Central and Northern Europe, share France\u2019s concept of strategic autonomy and calls for EU sourcing requirements for the continent\u2019s rearmament. But France has had an important political role in pushing EU-level coordination and cooperation against those who instead prefer the EU institutions to simply get out of the way of member states that want to prioritize short-term off-the-shelf solutions, primarily from US defense companies. Short-term Schadenfreude from the strategic autonomy critics may come at the expense of European industrial capacity in the medium to long term without French political initiatives at the EU level. All of this will be compounded by the likely fallout for French credibility from the likely delays in making its pledges for defense spending increases for the coming years a legislative reality, as happened when the Barnier government fell. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Berlin especially will be concerned. With some success, Chancellor Friedrich Merz and his new government had invested significantly in bringing back the Franco-German relationship from some of its most difficult days under Chancellor Olaf Scholz. While parliamentary instability will not directly impact Macron\u2019s primacy over foreign and defense policy, the political maneuvering ahead of the 2027 presidential elections in France is likely to get even more intense. That will reduce the policy space for the next French government when it comes to important decisions for the EU\u2019s economic outlook: within France on unavoidable reforms to improve the fiscal position of the EU\u2019s second-largest economy, and in Brussels when it comes to Europe\u2019s trade, tech, and other policies critical to a much-needed push for regulatory simplification and economic diversification amid growing pressures from the United States and China.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u2014J\u00f6rn Fleck<\/a>\u00a0is the senior director of the Atlantic Council\u2019s Europe Center.<\/p>\n Facing constraints at home, Macron is likely to focus even more on foreign policy<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\n With the French parliament voting to oust its second prime minister in a year, Macron is beset by chaos and ineffectiveness at home even as he has strived to be the figurehead for leadership<\/a> and European unity abroad. Just last week, the French president co-hosted the Coalition of the Willing meeting in Paris, where twenty-six nations committed<\/a> to providing postwar security guarantees to Ukraine.\u00a0<\/p>\n Bayrou is the third centrist leader out of a job since Macron called snap elections in June 2024 in a failed attempt to solidify his mandate after the far right\u2019s surprising performance in European Parliament elections. However, the resulting hung parliament has no working majority and has only increased the political fragmentation in France. This latest political crisis stems from the government\u2019s inability to pass a budget that would have seen a \u20ac44 billion cut in an effort to reduce France\u2019s budget deficit (which stands at 5.8 percent of GDP, nearly double the EU standard of 3 percent).\u00a0<\/p>\n Still, despite Macron\u2019s increasing unpopularity at home, with two years left in his last presidential term, he is unlikely to resign. Expect Macron to instead maintain his focus on the international arena where he can still drive his agenda forward: rallying dramatic international support for Ukraine through the Coalition of the Willing<\/a>, using the 2025 United Nations General Assembly to recognize a state of Palestine<\/a>, deepening ties with Southeast Asian<\/a> partners, and joining the United Kingdom and Germany in reimposing<\/a> snapback sanctions on Iran.\u00a0<\/p>\n But with France\u2019s budget under the microscope, these efforts may be more about capabilities and building international consensus rather than increasing spending.\u00a0<\/p>\n