French lawmakers move no-confidence motion against Prime Minister Michel Barnier
This has led France to a deeper crisis that threatens its capacity to legislate and tame a massive budget deficit.
This has led France to a deeper crisis that threatens its capacity to legislate and tame a massive budget deficit.
This has led France to a deeper crisis that threatens its capacity to legislate and tame a massive budget deficit.
Paris: French lawmakers united to support a no-confidence motion against Prime Minister Michel Barnier, with a majority of 331 votes in favour of the motion. This has led France to an even deeper crisis that threatens its capacity to legislate and tame a massive budget deficit.
Barnier now has to submit his resignation and that of his government on Thursday to President Emmanuel Macron, making his minority government's three-month tenure the shortest in France's Fifth Republic since 1958.
The hard left and far right punished Barnier for using special constitutional powers to adopt part of an unpopular budget without a final vote in parliament, where it lacked majority support. The draft budget had sought 60 billion euros in savings in a drive to shrink a gaping deficit.
"This (deficit) reality will not disappear by the magic of a motion of censure," Barnier told lawmakers ahead of the vote, adding the budget deficit would come back to haunt whichever government comes next.
No French government had lost a confidence vote since Georges Pompidou's in 1962. Macron ushered in the crisis by calling a snap election in June that delivered a polarised parliament.
With its president diminished, France now risks ending the year without a stable government or a 2025 budget, although the constitution allows special measures that would avert a U S-style government shutdown.
France's political turmoil will further weaken a European Union already reeling from the implosion of Germany's coalition government, and weeks before U S President-elect Donald Trump returns to the White House.