France may be on course for another snap parliamentary election, a government minister indicated on Tuesday, after opposition parties vowed to unseat Prime Minister Francois Bayrou and French markets plunged.
Bayrou jolted the political establishment out of its summer slumber on Monday with his unexpected move to seek a September 8 confidence vote on his debt-cutting plan.
The country’s main opposition parties were quick to make it clear that they would be voting against him and his minority government.
“We need a different Prime Minister and, above all, a different policy,” lead Socialist lawmaker Boris Vallaud wrote on X.
The confidence vote will take place two days before protests called by various groups on social media and backed by leftist parties and some unions, drawing comparisons with the Yellow Vest protests that erupted in 2018 over fuel price hikes and the cost of living.
Those “gilets jaunes” protests spiralled into a broader movement against Macron and his efforts at economic reform.
What Next?
If the government falls, President Emmanuel Macron could name a new prime minister immediately or ask Bayrou to stay on as head of a caretaker government, or he could call another snap election.
Justice Minister Gerald Darmanin told France 2 TV that while the government was still working on trying to find a compromise agreement, he “could not rule out” the scenario of another costly dissolution of parliament.
Macron, who is the only person who can dissolve parliament and launch fresh legislative elections, has yet to comment on Bayrou’s move, although Bayrou’s entourage said on Monday that Macron had signed off on the plan.
Macron lost his last prime minister, Michel Barnier, to a no-confidence vote over the budget in late 2024, after just three months in office following a snap election in July that year.
Finance Minister Eric Lombard said the government was still hoping to reach a last-minute deal with the opposition to avoid a government collapse, but from the far-right to the hard left, party leaders made clear that was unlikely to happen.
Jean-Luc Melenchon of the hard left France Unbowed went even further, saying Macron himself should step down.
“Emmanuel Macron must go. He is responsible for the crisis,” Melenchon wrote on X.
When he called a snap election in June last year, Macron said it would bring “clarity” – the very same words used by Bayrou on Monday to explain why he was holding a confidence vote. But the 2024 snap election only resulted in a more fragmented parliament, bringing no clarity at all.
“If Bayrou loses the confidence vote, the political ball will fall into President Emmanuel Macron’s court,” Berenberg analyst Salomon Fiedler said.
In case of a snap election, opinion polls show that “most likely, the new parliament would remain divided without an outright majority for one of the three political camps,” he said.
France’s blue-chip CAC40 index was down nearly 2% in early trade on Tuesday, having fallen 1.6% late on Monday. France’s 10-year bond yield rose around 3 basis points in early trade to around 3.52%, its highest since March. When a bond’s yield rises, its price falls.
(With inputs from Reuters)
