Francois Bayrou will seek a confidence vote on 8 September to secure parliamentary backing for plans to cut €44bn annually to shore up public finances. Bayrou framed the measures as necessary to confront a huge debt burden and said the vote will determine whether MPs accept the gravity of the situation and the chosen path to fix it. Major opposition groups including National Rally, Unbowed France, the Greens, and the Communists signalled they will vote against, making the government's survival uncertain and risking further political instability in France.
France's embattled prime minister looks likely to be ousted and his government toppled next month in a high-stakes confidence vote that could plunge the EU's second-biggest economy into even deeper political crisis. Francois Bayrou said on Monday that he would seek parliamentary backing for his unpopular plans to shore up France's ailing public finances on 8 September, asking deputies to confirm the scale of spending cuts he says are needed to save 44bn (38bn) a year.
We face an immediate danger, which we must tackle otherwise we have no future, he said of the country's huge debt burden, adding that the vote would focus on whether MPs agreed with the gravity of the danger, and choose the path to fix it. He said: There are moments when only a calculated risk can allow you to escape a more serious risk.
Early reactions suggested the centrist prime minister could well lose his gamble, toppling a government that was formed only last December after the premature collapse of his predecessor Michel Barnier's even shorter-lived administration. The leader of the opposition party National Rally (RN), Jordan Bardella, said his far-right party would never vote in favour of a government whose decisions are making the French suffer. Bayrou had in effect announced the end of his government, he said.
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