Political crisis

France, government falls: Bayro challenged by 364 votes. Today the resignation

The outcome of the confidence vote: 194 votes in favour, 364 against. Bayrou will appear this morning at the Elysée Palace to present his resignation to the head of state, Emmanuel Macron.

8 September 2025Aggiornato il 9 settembre 2025 alle ore 8.10

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Il primo ministro francese Francois Bayrou arriva per rilasciare una dichiarazione politica generale sulla questione del bilancio prima di un dibattito e di un voto di fiducia durante una sessione straordinaria dell'Assemblea nazionale a Parigi, Francia, 8 settembre 2025. REUTERS/Benoit Tessier TPX IMMAGINI DEL GIORNO

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The National Assembly voted no confidence in Francois Bayrou, decreeing the fall of his government. 364 deputies voted against the prime minister while 194 voted in favour. Bayrou will appear this morning (Tuesday 9 September) at the Elysée Palace to submit his resignation to the head of state, Emmanuel Macron, who will begin consultations to form a new government. Macron has already declared on several occasions that he has no intention of calling new elections.

The difference between yes and no votes to the Bayrou government was much wider than expected. The votes of the majority coalition had been calculated on the eve of the vote at 220, while only 194 of those expected were deposited in the ballot box. On the other hand, the oppositions of the entire gauche and the extreme right filled up, and more.

"I will not respond to polemics and offensive statements. I want to tell the members of the government that these nine months have been one of profound happiness because we managed to form a team in which there were many heavyweights, solidarity and no tension." This was stated by French Prime Minister Francois Bayrou in his reply at the end of the debate in the Parliamentary Assembly, just before the vote.

Francia, Moscovici: “Finanze pubbliche deteriorate, ma situazione non catastrofica”

The debate
"This test of truth, with the consent of the president of the republic, I wanted it," Bayrou stressed as he opened his speech before the National Assembly gathered in extraordinary session to vote on the confidence on the budget law. "The biggest risk was not to take any, to play politics as always", he added, citing 'the historical issue' of state debt. Debt reduction is a 'matter of vital urgency' for France, the French premier warned. Before the deputies, the premier evoked the colossal debt weighing on the eurozone's second-largest economy as well as the 'vital urgency' of restoring the country's public finances.

'Submission to debt is like submission to military force: submitted by arms or by creditors, in both cases we lose our freedom,' Bayrou continued in his speech to the Assemblée nationale. The premier, in his heartfelt appeal to national representation, then called for an 'awareness' against the 'inexorable tide of debt that engulfs' France. He then proposed a plan to bring the deficit down to 3% of GDP by 2029.

"Ladies and gentlemen deputies, you have the power to overthrow the government, but you do not have the power to erase reality", he went on to explain in another passage of his speech in the chamber: "Expenditure will continue to increase even more and the burden of debt, already unbearable, will become ever heavier and more expensive. Referring as much to General de Gaulle as to Pierre Mende's France, Prime Minister in 1954-1955, Bayrou stressed that 'a country that cannot balance its public finances is a country that has given up governing itself'. 'I refuse to believe that the balancing of public finances can only be achieved through the chronic increase of debt'.

Permanent Standoff

The acute sense of dread surrounding this latest vote of confidence in the National Assembly in Paris is counterbalanced by a discouraging consensus that the almost inevitable departure of the 74-year-old Bayrou, after nine months in office deemed ineffective, will do nothing to break the political stalemate in France.

'It is a disaster. The situation is completely blocked,' said one of the veteran political commentators, Bruno Cautres. Others were even harsher in their analysis. Marine Le Pen, leader of the far-right party RN (Rassemblement National), accused Bayrou of committing 'political suicide'.

The prime minister, chasing consensus, personally initiated the confidence vote, trying, as he explained, to 'shock' politicians and convince them to agree on a way to tackle the country's impending debt crisis.

Perché la Francia traballa

Describing France's growing public debt as "a terribly dangerous period... a time of hesitation and unrest", Bayrou warned that there would be a "high risk of unrest and chaos" if parliament did not support its austerity budget, whose aim was to cut public spending by €44 billion.

Bayrou argues that young people will be burdened with years of debt payments 'for the sake of the baby boomers' if France fails to meet a public debt equivalent to 114 per cent of its annual economic output.

But Bayrou's gamble - described in turn as a kamikaze gesture, a futile Cassandra-like prophecy and an attempt to end his political career with a heroic act of sacrifice - seems almost certainly destined to fail.

Despite some frantic last-minute discussions, it seems clear to everyone that Bayrou simply does not have the necessary votes to count on. At the heart of this 'crisis' - a term that seems to have dominated French headlines for a whole year - is the widely criticised decision of President Emmanuel Macron to call early parliamentary elections in June 2024 to 'clarify' the balance of power in the National Assembly.

The result was the exact opposite of clarity. French voters, increasingly dissatisfied with their young president, polarised towards the extremes, leaving the president in the lurch with a weakened minority centrist government and a parliament so divided that today many rival MPs cannot even shake hands.

The likely fall of the executive headed by Francois Bayrou does not represent 'the defeat of one man' but marks 'the end of the agony of a ghost government'. This was stated during her speech at the National Assembly by Marine Le Pen, leader of the Rassemblement National. For French President Emmanuel Macron, the dissolution of the National Assembly "is not an option, but an obligation,'' Le Pen said.

Tajani, instability France is not good for anyone

"Instability in France is not good for anyone. It is an important country, a founder of the European Union, it is one of the biggest economies in Europe. Everyone needs stability: just as Italy is a guarantee in Europe thanks to its political stability, so an equally important country that is unstable risks causing problems'. So says Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani on the possible fall of the Bayrou government, speaking on the sidelines of the event 'Competitiveness and new global challenges: Clean Industrial Deal, strategic autonomy and tariffs' at the Milan headquarters of Assolombarda. "I hope that extremist parties, neither extreme right nor extreme left, will not take advantage of this," Tajani added. "You know what my political affiliation is, I hope that the parties of the European People's Party area can recover and return to being protagonists of tomorrow's France."