Emmanuel Macron is grappling with narrowing options as his fourth prime minister in two years hangs on by a thread and markets are alarmed by France’s political and fiscal crisis.
People close to the French president say he is already preparing for the likelihood that the premier, François Bayrou, will lose a confidence vote next month. Bayrou earlier this week took politicians and markets by surprise by calling for the vote, in an attempt to bolster parliamentary backing for his strategy on how to rein in the country’s ballooning deficit.
Although Macron is still publicly urging lawmakers to support Bayrou in the September 8th vote, he is also consulting allies over next steps, including options for a new prime minister able to get a 2026 budget adopted without further political turmoil.
None of Macron’s options are particularly appealing if the opposition follows through on their promise to topple Bayrou. He can name another prime minister from his own camp or a right-wing politician to try to maintain the same strategy. Or he can switch tack to name a moderate leftist, such as a Socialist, knowing that they will undo some of his reforms.
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In no scenario would any of these governments enjoy a parliamentary majority, so Macron could ultimately try to break the deadlock by calling again for new elections.
The president, whose second and last term ends in mid-2027, has sought to shift the blame on to the opposition – particularly the key swing blocs of Marine Le Pen’s far right and the Socialists.
“It is up to the political parties to rise to the occasion by finding ways of compromise and stability, as is the practice throughout Europe,” Macron told Journal du Dimanche newspaper on Tuesday. “If they were to choose disorder, they would bear a heavy responsibility in the current delicate geopolitical moment.”
But the crisis is largely one of Macron’s own doing.
Since he called and lost parliamentary elections last year, his centre and right-wing alliance has been left without a majority in the assembly. His first pick for premier, the conservative politician and former EU Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier, was in office for just three months before being toppled over his unpopular 2025 budget.
Bayrou managed to get a slightly watered-down budget adopted in February because he convinced the Socialists to abstain, but they have already said they will not repeat the favour on his new proposals for €44 billion of spending cuts and tax rises in the 2026 budget.
Le Pen and far-left leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon have even called on Macron to resign to pave the way for an early presidential vote, but he has repeatedly vowed he would never do so.
An Elabe opinion poll published on Tuesday showed 67 per cent wanted Macron to resign, while 72 per cent of respondents did not want Bayrou to stay on.
Erwan Balanant, an MP from Bayrou’s centrist Modem party, said voting out the prime minister would thrust France deeper into crisis. “If the government falls on September 8th, we’ll find ourselves exactly in the same situation as we were in last July,” he said in an interview. “The question now is: who is ready to take responsibility today to find solutions?”
Opposition parties that hold at least 330 seats out of the 577 have said they will not back Bayrou, so his premiership will end unless he secures an unlikely U-turn from them. Bayrou on Wednesday offered to meet with party chiefs next week to negotiate the deficit-cutting plan.
The looming election battle to succeed Macron in 2027 complicates the choice of a new prime minister as politicians are increasingly unwilling to be seen as helping an unpopular president and enabling spending cuts.
If Macron wants to attempt continuity he could pick a new prime minister from his own centrist party, or an allied party such as former prime minister Edouard Philippe’s Horizons or the conservative Les Républicains party (LR), which all are represented in the current government.
Macron has previously wanted to tap Sébastien Lecornu, a long-time ally who was a former member of LR and is now serving as defence minister, but the opposition may see that as a provocation given Lecornu’s closeness to Macron.
Macron can also try a new configuration that he has taken great pains to avoid since last summer’s snap election – naming a moderate left-wing figure as prime minister.
A left-wing electoral alliance came in first in last year’s legislative election, giving them a claim to the premiership, but Macron instead chose to ally with the smaller right-wing LR party, largely because he was loath to see his pro-business economic agenda picked apart.
Philippe Brun, a senior Socialist MP, told the Financial Times it was time for the left to be given a shot. “The only government that has a chance of surviving now is one we are running, but it would require securing an agreement with the centre not to topple us,” he said. “Macron cannot name someone from his own camp.”
Socialist party leader Olivier Faure last year threw his hat into the ring for premier and is said to be still eager for the job. Another option would be Bernard Cazeneuve, a former Socialist politician who previously served as prime minister under president François Hollande.
Geoffroy Didier, senior member of the conservative LR, said that the party was unlikely to join a government led by a left-wing prime minister, but that they could be convinced not to censor them.
“That would be the fair middle ground, if [Macron] decided to turn to” the left, he said, adding that it was “idealistic” to expect another LR prime minister after Barnier.
Political volatility has already hampered efforts to begin chipping away at a national deficit that reached 5.8 per cent of GDP last year – far above EU limits of 3 per cent of GDP. Debt-servicing costs are forecast to hit €66 billion this year to become the government’s biggest area of spending, ahead of education and defence.
The risk for Macron is that instability drags on so long that – for the second year in a row – the budget for next year cannot be passed by late December. Investors have already pushed up the interest rates they demand to buy French government bonds, and both the bond and equity markets wavered this week after Bayrou’s announcement.
Some see another snap legislative vote as inevitable. “As long as there is no dissolving of parliament, we will have governments unable to pass laws, even ones as crucial as a budget,” said Didier.
An inveterate risk taker, Macron may agree that is the only way out of the impasse. “It is not his wish, because the Assembly is legitimate and reflects the country in both its diversity and its divisions,” said a person in his entourage. “But he has always said that he would not rule out using the power granted to him in the constitution.”
– Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2025
