In light of this summer’s discussions and political positions taken, Prime Minister François Bayrou has acknowledged the virtual impossibility of his government surviving the debate in Parliament on budget bills this fall. He has therefore taken the initiative to set the timetable and will likely “leave before being pushed out.” Indeed, the almost certain scenario is that he will lose the vote of confidence and be toppled on September 8th. With this last stand, he is likely to die on the field of honor and have the satisfaction of claiming that he refused to engage in demagoguery with a budget that was against his personal convictions and the interests of the country.
More specifically, to win a vote of confidence the government will need to obtain an absolute majority of the votes cast (the bar being lower than for the passage of a vote of no confidence). Yet the political bloc from which the government coalition hails only represents one third of the votes in the National Assembly. Compounding matters, all political opposition forces, the entire left and the far right, have already made known that they will not vote their confidence in the government.
The date of September 8th was not chosen at random: a call for mobilization to “block” the country starting September 10th first spread on social media and was taken up by virtually all political opposition forces, stoking underlying fears of a “Yellow Vest”-type movement.
Although the option of dissolving the National Assembly is still not the most likely, President Macron could nonetheless decide to make this move and bet on the victory of the far-right Rassemblement National (National Rally – RN) in the next legislative elections. In such case, France would enter into a period of “cohabitation” (a power-sharing arrangement where the President has a more limited role focused on foreign affairs, appointments, and the passage of laws and is, so to speak, the government’s chief adversary) with a clear majority, which for him would be a way of ending his term of office in a more orderly way than if there were no majority in Parliament and ongoing deadlock. But this move would be a risky gamble, as seen by the outcome of the elections in July 2024.
