France's centrist Prime Minister François Bayrou called a confidence vote amid deep divisions over an unpopular austerity budget and debt-reduction plan. Bayrou, 74 and close to President Emmanuel Macron, is expected to lose as opposition parties on the far right and left seek to eject him after less than nine months in office. Markets reacted negatively with the Paris stock market falling, bank shares dropping and borrowing costs rising. A planned protest movement and potential union strikes are set to begin on 10 September regardless of the vote outcome. Macron has convened a special parliamentary session on 8 September for the vote.
I will fight like a dog, the centrist prime minister told L'Express on Tuesday, after his surprise decision to call a vote of confidence from parliamentarians.
We need to change politics and for that, we need to change prime minister.
Is there or is there not a national emergency to rebalance the accounts, to escape excessive debt by choosing to reduce our deficits and produce more? That is the central question.
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