Bayrou Voted Out Deepening France's Political and Fiscal Mess

The Wall Street Journal reports French Government Collapses in No-Confidence Vote

President Emmanuel Macron has lost his second government in less than a year, a measure of how France is caught in a spiral of political dysfunction that is draining its public finances.

A no-confidence motion against the government of Prime Minister François Bayrou won the support of 364 lawmakers in the 577-seat National Assembly, forcing him to tender his resignation.

"You have the power to overthrow the government, but you don't have the power to erase reality," Bayrou told lawmakers at the National Assembly, moments before the vote, describing France's finances as "a silent, underground, invisible, and unbearable hemorrhage."

Macron's office said he would accept Bayrou's resignation on Tuesday and appoint a new prime minister tasked with forming a government in the coming days.

The next prime minister will have to cajole lawmakers in the National Assembly, the highly fragmented lower house of Parliament, to agree on next year's budget by the end of December. France is also facing a gauntlet of public protests against any cuts to public spending, starting with a Wednesday demonstration organized by the "Let's Block Everything" movement.

The gridlock is fueling public frustration and providing France's antiestablishment parties with fodder to argue the time has come for voters to turn the page on decades of governance by mainstream leaders.

"We are witnessing the collapse of a system," far-right leader Marine Le Pen said on Monday, calling for new parliamentary elections.

Lawmakers on the far left are demanding that Macron himself step down—something he has repeatedly said he won't do before his term ends in 2027. And Macron doesn't plan to call snap parliamentary elections, a maneuver that cost his party dozens of seats in 2024 and led to the lower house's current fragmentation.