French Prime Minister Francois Bayrou on Thursday survived his first vote of no confidence in parliament after the motion, brought by the leftist opposition, failed to gain traction on the far right.
The challenge in the National Assembly came after Bayrou’s statement this week on his government policy agenda, in which he opened the door to fresh talks on a 2023 pension reform “without taboo” but also said that France’s “excessive” deficits needed to be cut in this year’s budget.
The speech sparked condemnation from most of the opposition in parliament where Bayrou — in the job only since last month — is well short of an absolute majority, making his government highly vulnerable to any no-confidence vote that, if successful, would force it to resign.
Jordan Bardella, the leader of the far-right National Rally (RN), dismissed it as “idle talk” by “a man of spineless continuity”.
But the backers of the no-confidence motion, submitted by the hard-left LFI party, failed to win the RN’s backing.
“We don’t think a no-confidence vote should be a gadget to create a buzz,” RN deputy Jean-Philippe Tanguy said ahead of the vote.
The RN’s vice-president, Sebastien Chenu, added also before the vote that his party would judge the government “not by its words, but by its actions”.
Tanguy warned, however, that the RN might still come for Bayrou over his budget for 2025 which is overdue after the previous government of Michel Barnier was toppled over its austerity plans.
The new government’s budget announcement would be a “moment of truth”, Tanguy said.
– ‘Another path’ –
The near-certainty of defeat as the vote neared did little to diminish LFI’s combativity.
“Mr Prime Minister, the days of your government of unhappiness are numbered,” said LFI coordinator Manuel Bompard as the debate on the no-confidence motion got under way.
“And when it falls, the monarch will follow,” he said, in a reference to President Emmanuel Macron, who appointed Bayrou as France’s fourth prime minister within a year only last month.
Bayrou meanwhile accused the hard left of trying to take France down the path of “infighting”.
The prime minister welcomed the decision of the moderately-left Socialists to deny the LFI motion their backing, despite having been allied with the LFI since last year’s general election.
The Socialists’ defection showed that “another path towards understanding is opening up”, Bayrou said.
The no-confidence motion won the backing of 131 deputies, well short of the 288 it needed to pass.
French politics was plunged into chaos last year when Macron called an election to break political deadlock but the vote returned a hopelessly divided lower chamber.
Macron has acknowledged his decision to dissolve the National Assembly had led to “divisions” and “instability”.
Constitutional rules mean new legislative elections cannot be called until July.
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