France's Prime Minister Francois Bayrou delivers a speech before losing a confidence vote over the Government's austerity Budget, at the National Assembly in Paris yesterday. Photo / Bertrand Guay, AFP
What will President Emmanuel Macron do now?
That question is back on everybody’s lips in France this week after the Government lost a confidence vote in the National Assembly, the country’s lower house of parliament, forcing the Prime Minister, Francois Bayrou, and his Cabinet to resign.
Bayrou, a centrist ally of Macron, had unexpectedly called the vote last month.
He hoped to force lawmakers’ hands as he tried to push through cost-cutting measures meant to address France’s ballooning debt. But his bid failed.
The collapse of the Government now leaves Macron with an assortment of imperfect, even unpalatable, options. Each holds its own challenge.
The presidency is in many ways France’s most powerful political office. But prime ministers and their cabinets, who answer to the National Assembly, are formally in charge of domestic policy, including the Budget.
Here’s what you need to know about what Macron could do:
A new government
The quickest solution, and the one Macron favours, is to appoint a new prime minister and form a new Cabinet. His office said after yesterday’s vote that he would pick someone “in the next few days”.
The question will be whether a new government could fare any better than the two that have fallen since the President called snap parliamentary elections last year.
From a legal standpoint, Macron can pick whomever he likes. Politically, though, Macron needs to choose someone who can pass muster with the National Assembly’s 577 lawmakers — at least long enough to pass the 2026 budget.
However, the problem for any new government will remain the same. The lower house of parliament is deadlocked among three large political blocs — a collection of left-wing parties, a tenuous centre-right coalition, and a nationalist, anti-immigrant far-right.
The result has been paralysis.
Finding a prime minister who can navigate that landscape is arduous.
Until now, Macron has favoured centre-right politicians who he believed were skilled enough to survive while preserving his flagship reforms, like raising the legal retirement age.
Some of the names that have been floated as a new prime minister, like Defence Minister Sebastien Lecornu, fit that mould.
But Macron could also lean left. Speculation has also focused on Eric Lombard, the Economy Minister, who has good relations with the Socialists and who recently told the Financial Times that budget compromises were needed.
New elections
Some political parties say merely replacing Bayrou won’t cut it. Instead, they are urging Macron to call parliamentary elections as soon as possible, in the hope they yield a working majority.
Macron has, for now, ruled that out. His centrist coalition, which is projected to lose seats in a snap election, does not want to go back to the ballot box. The far-right National Rally party and the far-left France Unbowed party would eagerly go.
A recent study by the IFOP polling institute found that the National Rally and its allies would get about 32% to 33% of votes in the first round of snap elections, versus about 25% to 26% for the left, 15% for the centrist coalition, and 13% for the mainstream conservative party.
But projecting final seat results in France’s two-round voting system is tricky, and it remains unclear whether new elections would break the deadlock.
The president resigns
An even more radical option would be for Macron to resign, triggering early presidential elections. That has happened only once before under France’s modern Fifth Republic, when Charles de Gaulle stepped down in 1969 after a failed referendum.
France Unbowed — still fuming that Macron refused to appoint a prime minister from the left after it won the most seats in the last elections — has been pushing for this option Even some more moderate politicians support it.
They argue that Macron, who was first elected in 2017, is responsible for the country’s rising debt; that he has become too unpopular to effectively govern; and that only a new president with a clear mandate can pull the country out of its political quagmire.
Just 15% of the electorate has confidence in Macron, according to an opinion poll this month for Le Figaro Magazine by the Verian Group.
But Macron has repeatedly vowed to serve out his second term, which ends in 2027, and he cannot seek another.
Bumpy road ahead
The French Constitution does not dictate a time frame for appointing a prime minister.
Until Macron does, Bayrou and his Cabinet could remain in a caretaker capacity.
Still, the French President is expected to move quickly, which would give the new government more time to put together its own Budget bill.
In any case, the road ahead looks bumpy.
Tomorrow, a disparate, unco-ordinated and nebulous movement called “Bloquons Tout”, or “Let’s Block Everything” is urging protesters to bring France to a standstill.
And on September 18, unions have called for massive work stoppages and protests to express anger over any austerity Budget that they say would unfairly burden lower- and middle-class workers.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Written by: Aurelien Breeden
©2025 THE NEW YORK TIMES