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French Prime Minister Michel Barnier has resigned after lawmakers ousted his government in a no-confidence vote.
The Elysée said yes on Thursday Barnier has resigned, but President Emmanuel Macron has asked him to remain in the role until a successor is named.
Barnier’s resignation comes during a dramatic week of his three-month minority the administration was overthrown by MPs from the far-right National Rally (RN) and the left-wing Nouveau Front Populaire (NFP) bloc over the deficit-reduction budget.
Macron, who will address the nation on Thursday night, now faces the difficult task of choosing a new prime minister who will face the same difficult equation in a fractured, relaxed parliament.
Under FranceAccording to the Constitution, the president cannot call new legislative elections until July, one year after the last vote.
The resignation confirms Barnier as the prime minister with the shortest term in France’s Fifth Republic and only the second to face a vote of no confidence.
Macron chose the veteran right-wing politician for the role after his hand was significantly weakened when he called and lost snap legislative elections this summer, resulting in a dormant parliament.
Barnier’s government fell largely because of RN leader Marine Le Pen’s decision to withdraw her tacit support for his administration over the budget, despite the prime minister offering last-minute concessions.
“I don’t consider this a victory. We had to make a choice, and the choice we made was to protect the French people,” Le Pen said shortly after Wednesday’s vote, adding that when a new prime minister is appointed, the RN will work with all parties “to jointly create a budget that is acceptable for everyone”.
Le Pen’s allies criticized the government for pushing what they called “project fear”, with warnings of dire consequences if the first part of the budget failed. But she was confident that the budget would be adopted. “Our institutions are solid,” she said.
Macron must now decide whether to rebuild a similar alliance with Barnier’s party, Les Républicains, or try to create a new configuration, perhaps this time with more moderate MPs from the left.
Former Prime Minister Gabriel Attal called for a loose alliance that would add Socialist MPs to those from his Renaissance Party, their centrist allies and the LR, to reduce the RN’s ability to topple the next government.
But the centrist’s overture to the center-left has so far not convinced them to break away from the NFP alliance, which includes the far left.
Macron is facing increasing pressure – particularly from the far left and far right – to resign before the end of his term in 2027 to break the deadlock, an option he criticized this week as a “political fiction”.
“Those who want the head of state to go are becoming complicit in a creeping coup,” François Bayrou, a centrist Macron ally, said on BFMTV on Thursday. “The head of state is a symbol of the stability we need given the crisis we are going through.”
Barnier’s administration fell without passing a controversial 2025 budget, which included a 60 billion euro package of tax increases and spending cuts aimed at reducing the deficit from more than 6 percent this year to around 5 percent next year.
His successor will have to produce a new budget before the end-of-year deadline or adopt temporary measures to keep the state running.
Yaël Braun-Pivet, the speaker of the National Assembly, called on Thursday for the “quick” formation of a government so that discussions on the budget could continue.
“There is still time to secure a budget for France before the end of the year. Time is very short, but it is legally and politically possible if everyone sits down at the table again,” she said on France Inter radio.
The parliamentary deadlock will continue to hamper budget talks.
The far-left party La France Insoumise said it would “automatically censor” any prime minister not drawn from the four-party NFP.
French 10-year bond yields were little changed on Thursday at 2.89 percent. But its spread over benchmark German debt, a key measure of investor concern, fell to 0.78 percentage points, the lowest since late November. The Paris stock index Cac 40 was higher by 0.4 percent.
“We just need something to put the deficit on a downward trajectory, and the pace at which that happens doesn’t really matter,” said Chris Jeffery, head of macroeconomics at Legal & General Investment Management.
But S&P warned that the fall of the government means there is likely to be “significantly less fiscal consolidation” than under the measures proposed by Barnier. The rating agency maintained France’s credit rating last week.
Additional reporting by Mari Novak and Ian Smith
