With just nine days to go before a confidence vote in the Assemblée Nationale that will almost certainly end in defeat for Prime Minister François Bayrou, all eyes have turned to the French president. Bayrou's imminent departure brings the number of prime ministers since the beginning of Emmanuel Macron's second term in 2022 to four, a record under the Fifth Republic. It has been a bitter pill to swallow for a president struggling to counter the fragility that has struck the core of his office. Every government combination Macron has tried so far has collapsed, due to a lack of majority and of meaningful reforms.

On Friday, August 29, when the president was asked about the likely dismissal of the Bayrou government on September 8, he once again appealed to the "responsibility" of an opposition that, from the left to the far-right Rassemblement National (RN), has refused to grant its confidence to the prime minister. "I would hope that the work of the coming days will convince [them] that, even if there are disagreements on the technical [budgetary] measures (…), there can be at least some ways to agree on the facts [of the debt]," Macron said. While calling Bayrou's gamble "not entirely crazy," he added "I am not in the business of political fiction."

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