French government faces collapse in no-confidence vote

 

French government faces collapse in no-confidence vote

 

The Barnier government could be toppled by the end of the week after prime minister declines to put budget to lawmakers.

A motion of no confidence will likely happen on Wednesday which means Michel Barnier could be toppled before the end of the week.

 

December 2, 2024 3:04 pm CET

By Victor Goury-Laffont

https://www.politico.eu/article/french-government-set-to-face-no-confidence-vote/

 

PARIS — French Prime Minister Michel Barnier opened the door for opposition parties to attempt to topple his government — probably on Wednesday — by announcing he will not submit his social security budget to a vote.

 

Barnier and Marine Le Pen's far-right National Rally have been engaged in an increasingly high-stakes battle over the issue, which could see the prime minister fall as early as the end of this week.

 

France is now braced for a reaction from financial markets, which can often force governments' hands.  As the crisis intensified last week, investors briefly declared France a worse credit risk than Greece, whose debt almost brought the eurozone to its knees just over a decade ago. France is the currency bloc's second largest economy and the chaos is likely to send shock waves well beyond its borders.

 

"The French are asking for and expect stability," Barnier told lawmakers on Monday afternoon. "Everyone must take responsibility, and I take mine."

 

Caretaker government

Under the French constitution, the government can pass legislation without parliamentary approval. Because he has now done this on the budget, lawmakers can call a motion of no confidence. If it's successful it would reject the legislation and force the government’s resignation.

 

A motion of no confidence will likely happen on Wednesday. The government would then serve in a caretaker capacity until a new administration is appointed.

 

After Barnier's announcement, Le Pen announced that the National Rally would both submit its own motion of no-confidence and back the one put forward by the left. The budget, Le Pen told reporters, would "make the French pay the consequences of [French President Emmanuel] Macron's incompetency over the past seven years."

 

Barring an unlikely scenario in which one of Barnier's major opposition group backtracks, the government will fall before the end of the week. However, snap elections can not be called before next summer, which means the next government will have to navigate the same fragmented political landscape.

 

This would be the first successful motion of no-confidence since 1962 and only the second one since the current French republic was formed in 1958.

 

French 10-year sovereign borrowing costs widened over those of Germany on Monday, hitting fresh 12-year highs. The measure is a reflection of how much riskier the market perceives lending to France over Germany is. The wider the measure, the riskier the view.

 

Kingmaker role

Initially Le Pen’s party was willing to play a kingmaker role, allowing Barnier to stay in power in exchange for certain concessions. But the French far-right powerhouse then showed it was willing to turn on the 73-year-old head of government, which it accused of not having taken its concerns seriously.

 

The National Rally president, Jordan Bardella, warned Monday morning that it would take “a last-minute miracle” to change the party's mind on voting against the government.

 

For a few hours on Monday it looked as though such a miracle may have come in the shape of a statement from the prime minister's office. Barnier had given in to a key request from the far-right party, pledging that the government would not stop reimbursing patients for certain types of drugs.

 

Many demands

Barnier had already made significant concessions to the far right — by agreeing to restrict access to public health care for undocumented immigrants — but had not publicly credited the National Rally for these changes, to Le Pen's dismay.

 

This time, however, the prime minister name-dropped the far-right party and its presidential candidate: "Many demands were made on this issue. Mrs. Marine Le Pen, representing the National Rally, reminded the prime minister of this during a phone conversation [Monday morning]. The government pledges not to stop reimbursing drugs in 2025.

 

Still, that doesn't appear to be enough for Le Pen, who is now asking that the government make yet another costly concession by implementing a full inflation-based adjustment of pensions on Jan. 1. “It’s the government’s decision to accept it or not,” Le Pen said after the prime minister's office's statement.

 

Izabella Kaminska contributed to this article from London.