French Prime Minister Francois Bayrou is expected to vote no confidence in the legislature on Thursday, with it unlikely that the activity will go.
The problem in the National Assembly comes after Bayrou’s speech this week on his government policy objective, in which he opened the door to new talks on a 2023 annuity reform “without taboo” but also said that France’s “excessive” deficits needed to be cut in this year’s budget.
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The conversation sparked the disapproval of the majority of the opposition in parliament, which Bayrou finds himself in need of, making his federal extremely vulnerable to a no-confidence ballot that, if successful, would force it to retire.
Jordan Bardella, the leader of the far-right National Rally ( RN), dismissed it as “idle talk” by” a man of spineless continuity”.
But the no-confidence activity, submitted by the hard-left LFI group, will however not get the RN’s support, group members have said.
” We don’t believe a no-confidence vote should be a tool to get a buzz”, RN assistant Jean-Philippe Tanguy said, with the RN’s vice-president, Sebastien Chenu, saying his party would determine the state” not by its terms, but by its activities”.
Tanguy cautioned, however, that the RN might still be in place after Bayrou’s budget for 2025, which is overdue as a result of Michel Barnier’s administration’s overthrow of its austerity plans. The new government’s budget announcement would be a “moment of truth”, Tanguy said.
In the absence of far-right backing, the no-confidence motion cannot obtain the 288 votes necessary to topple Bayrou even if the moderate-left Socialists join the LFI’s initiative, which was still uncertain hours before the vote.
The motion is to be debated from 3: 00 PM ( 1400 GMT ) with a vote expected by early evening.
When President Emmanuel Macron called an election last year to break political impasse, the vote resulted in a hopelessly divided lower chamber.
Macron has acknowledged his decision to dissolve the National Assembly had led to “divisions” and “instability”.
New legislative elections cannot be called until July, according to constitutional laws.
