The government of French Prime Minister Michel Barnier is expected to fall on Wednesday as he faces a vote of no confidence. File Photo by Mohammed Badra/EPA-EFE
French Prime Minister Michel Barnier is bracing for a no-confidence vote in parliament on Wednesday in which parties from the left and the right are expected to join forces to oust him after he forced through his budget without lawmakers’ consent.
National Assembly members are set to debate several no-confidence motions in Barnier, who has been in office for less than three months, with the European Union’s former chief Brexit negotiator and veteran conservative politician expected to lose due to a rare block vote by the leftist New Popular Front and the far-right National Front. Advertisement
The two parties jointly command a 27-seat majority in the 577-seat lower house.
The toppling of Barnier’s government is likely to intensify a growing political crisis, sparking concerns across the 27-country European Union that France is becoming impossible to govern and is being dragged down by a $175.3 billion and growing budget deficit.
President Emmanuel Macron appointed Barnier in September, over the heads of the parties that won the most seats in July elections, with the Herculean task of getting billions of euros of budget cuts to government spending, social security and local government through a parliament in which his Republicans Party holds just 51 seats. Advertisement
Barnier watered down parts of cuts in the face of stiff opposition including an electricity tax hike and proposals to make patients pay more of the cost of drug prescriptions, both of which he scrapped.
Barnier also made 11th-hour concessions on reforms to social security but when these failed to win over lawmakers he resorted to presidential decree, specifically executive powers afforded by the constitution, to force the bill through Monday.
That power-play had tipped France into a “deep, huge political crisis,” a left-wing member of parliament told the BBC.
The 72-year-old is expected to go on national television Tuesday night to make a plea for parliamentarians not to bring down his government.
Failure to do so will be a double blow for Barnier’s legacy as he will simultaneously become the shortest-serving prime minister in French history and the first to lose a no-confidence in more than six decades.
