President Emmanuel Macron has expressed his "full support" for Prime Minister François Bayrou despite estimates that he will lose a confidence vote next month - which the daily said would The Guardian very likely led to the fall of the government.
On Wednesday, Macron chaired a cabinet meeting. A government spokesman Sophie Primas announced after the meeting that the president was behind Bayrou and that the government was in a "combative mood". As he pointed out The Guardian, France finds itself in yet another political crisis.
Bayrou, a centrist and long-time Macron ally, announced this week that he will ask parliament for a vote of confidence on September 8 to push through €44 billion worth of austerity measures. The plan includes cancelling two public holidays and freezing most social benefits. According to polls, Bayrou is the least popular prime minister since 1958 and his proposals are being received very negatively by the public.
Primas stressed that according to Macron, there is no room for "denial or catastrophic scenarios" regarding public finances and that the opposition must show "responsibility". "France is a solid country with solid foundations... but we must take the reins of our destiny in our own hands," she said. As she writes The Guardian, the President also wanted to send a clear signal to the financial markets: that France wants to be even more stable.
But Macron is still bearing the consequences of the crisis that erupted last summer when he called unexpected early elections. These ended in a stalemate without a clear majority. Since then, the National Assembly has been divided between the left, the far right and the centre.
Michel Barnier, the right-wing prime minister chosen by Macron last September, lasted only three months - his budget plan failed and the government fell. He was replaced by Bayrou, who is likely to resign after just nine months. Even replacing him quickly would not guarantee Macron that the new prime minister will push through next year's budget.
Calls for new snap elections are therefore growing - less than 18 months after the last one. Marine Le Pen's far-right National Association is backing this in the hope of winning more seats. According to polls by Ifop, Elabe and Toluna Harris Interactive, a majority of French people want parliament dissolved. Although Macron said in early August that he wanted to avoid an election, he has not ruled out the possibility.
Former Prime Minister Édouard Philippe, now the leader of the centre-right Horizons movement, said that if the stalemate continued and no government could pass a budget, elections would be inevitable. Gabriel Attal, another ex-prime minister and head of Macron's centrist Renaissance party, on the other hand, warned that new elections might not bring stability or a clear solution.
Bayrou warned again that French debt is unsustainable, especially at a time of rising interest rates that make servicing loans more expensive. After years of overspending, France is under pressure from the EU to rein in its deficit and reduce its debt. Political parties agree that this is a problem - but according to The Guardian have fundamentally different views on how to address it.
Who is François Bayrou?
Bayrou is an experienced centrist politician who was at the birth of the Democratic Movement (MoDem) and has repeatedly run for president. He has previously served as Minister of Education and has long profiled himself as a defender of the centre against both the right and the left. He has been a key ally of Macron since his first election in 2017. But critics accuse him of lacking both charisma as prime minister and the ability to unite a divided parliament, as recent opinion polls confirm.
The Guardian/gnews.cz - GH
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