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Sep 8, 2025  |  
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Aurelien Breeden


NextImg:France, at an Impasse, Heads Toward Another Government Collapse

A politically paralyzed France has had four prime ministers in the past 20 months and appears on the verge of adding a fifth, a degree of instability suggestive of institutional crisis and unknown since the establishment of the Fifth Republic in 1958.

François Bayrou, a centrist prime minister who has been in office for about nine months, three times as long as his predecessor, has called a vote of confidence for Monday in what appears to be a suicidal move. The vote centers on his unpopular austerity budget proposal, designed to confront a severe deficit and a worsening national debt, in part by freezing welfare payments at their current levels.

Both the far-right National Rally party led by Marine Le Pen and a group of left and far-left parties have said they will oppose Mr. Bayrou. This would ensure the fall of the government, a political void and renewed pressure on President Emmanuel Macron, who has become an isolated figure.

The far right and the left hold 330 seats in the 577-seat National Assembly, the lower house of Parliament. A majority of votes cast in opposition to Mr. Bayrou would be enough to bring his government down.

With Parliament divided into far-right, centrist and left-wing blocs, each large enough to create an impasse, France has been in a state of ominous drift since Mr. Macron called snap parliamentary elections in June 2024, another apparently capricious gesture that upended French politics.

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From left, Sébastien Lecornu, the minister of the armed forces, President Emmanuel Macron and Mr. Bayrou in May. The Monday vote will center on Mr. Bayrou’s unpopular austerity budget proposal.Credit...Pool photo by Thomas Samson

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