France government updates: Le Pen says her party will vote to oust Barnier in no-confidence motion

Paris: Macron’s government survived a no-confidence motion by a narrow margin, after then Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne bypassed parliament to ram through an unpopular pension reform bill that would raise the state pension age.

A total of 278 MPs voted in favour of the no-confidence motion. It needed 287 votes to bring down the government.

After Macron’s party lost the ruling majority in the National Assembly at June 2022 legislative elections, Borne pushed the 2023 budget bill through using constitutional powers to bypass a parliamentary vote.

The left-wing Nupes coalition and the far right National Rally (RN) party called for a no-confidence vote, but they did not win enough support to bring down the government – and the actions remained largely symbolic.

Another way to measure the market jitters is the premium investors demand to hold French government bonds rather than uber-safe German ones.

The bigger the difference – or ‘spread’ in banker jargon – the more risk traders see.

That premium is now the largest since 2012 just after the then-ECB President Mario Draghi had promised to do “whatever it takes” to save the euro.

Barnier’s entourage and Le Pen’s camp are each blaming the other for the situation, saying they had done all they could to reach a deal and had been open to dialogue.

A source close to Barnier said the prime minister had made major concessions to Le Pen and that voting to bring down the government would mean losing those gains.

“Is she ready to sacrifice all the wins she got?” the source close to Barnier said.

Michel Barnier would have to tender his resignation, and the resignation of his government, to President Emmanuel Macron.

Barnier’s government can remain in place in a caretaker capacity to handle day-to-day business while Macron tries to come up with a new prime minister, which could take well into next year.

Macron’s pick would need to be someone with enough cross-party appeal to survive a confidence vote.

One possibility would be to name a government of technocrats with no political programme.

If parliament has not passed a budget by Dec. 20, the caretaker government can invoke constitutional powers to pass it by ordinance.

However, there is a legal grey area about whether a caretaker government can use such powers and doing so would inevitably trigger a political maelstrom.

A more likely move would be for the caretaker government to propose special emergency legislation to ensure there is a budget at the start of the year.

However, it could only roll over spending limits and tax provisions from this year, and all savings measures Barnier had planned would fall by the wayside.

That would mean pensions would get squeezed and tax thresholds would rise for 17 million people as neither could be adjusted for inflation, according to Finance Minister Antoine Armand.

French far-right leader Marine Le Pen is the youngest daughter of Jean Marie Le Pen, the founder and former leader of France’s far-right National Front party.

A trained lawyer, she joined the party aged 18 and took over from her father in 2011.

She then expelled him in 2015 in an attempt to transform the image of a party once tainted by association with anti-Semitism, and to make it a party of government.

In 2018, National Front changed its name to the “National Rally” (or Rassemblement National in French) in a further bid to change the party’s image among voters.

Le Pen, 56, and her far-right party are facing charges of misappropriating European Union funds, charges Le Pen and her co-defendants deny.

French judges will deliver their verdicts on the case on March 31, 2025.

Le Pen lost to Emmanuel Macron in the second round of France’s presidential election in 2017 and 2022, and is widely seen as the current frontrunner for 2027.

Prosecutors are seeking a five-year ban from public office for Le Pen, which could prevent her from running in 2027.