PARIS, France
French Prime Minister Michel Barnier is expected to resign on Thursday after far-right and leftist lawmakers voted to topple his government, plunging France into its second major political crisis in six months.
Barnier, a veteran politician
who was formerly the European Union’s Brexit negotiator, will be the shortest
serving prime minister in modern French history. No French government had lost
a confidence vote since Georges Pompidou’s in 1962.
The hard left and far right
punished Barnier for ramming an unpopular budget through an unruly hung
parliament without a vote. The draft budget had sought 60 billion euros ($63.07
billion) in savings in a drive to shrink a gaping deficit.
Barnier’s resignation will cap
weeks of tensions over the budget, which Marine Le
Pen’s far-right National Rally said was too harsh on working people. It
also further weakens the standing of President Emmanuel
Macron, who precipitated the current crisis with an ill-fated decision to
call a snap election ahead of the summer Paris Olympics.
Macron faces growing calls to
resign, but he has a mandate until 2027 and cannot be pushed out. Still, the
long-running political debacle has left him a diminished figure.
France now risks ending the
year without a stable government or a 2025 budget, although the constitution
allows special measures that would avert a US-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 US President-elect Donald
Trump returns to the White House.
Trump is due to visit Paris on
Saturday for the unveiling of the renovated Notre Dame cathedral, and Macron
wants to name a prime minister before then, Reuters reported on Wednesday.
France now faces a period of
deep political uncertainty that is already unnerving investors in French
sovereign bonds and stocks. Earlier this week, France’s borrowing costs briefly
exceeded those of Greece, generally considered far more risky.
Any new prime minister would
face the same challenges as Barnier in getting bills, including the 2025
budget, adopted by a divided parliament. There can be no new parliamentary
election before July.
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