After nine months in office, French Prime Minister François Bayrou called for a confidence vote on his austerity budget plan on Monday, September 8, 2025—a suicidal move for a government that does not enjoy a parliamentary majority, which unsurprisingly resulted in its downfall.
Emmanuel Macron’s second term is marked by genuine political paralysis, with already four different Prime Ministers in 20 months. But this paralysis is logical when one considers that Emmanuel Macron continues to try to govern as if he still had a parliamentary majority, even though his party was soundly defeated in the snap legislative elections he called in 2024 after a trouncing in the European elections.
If Macron had even an ounce of honor and dignity, he would have resigned, as General De Gaulle did in 1969 when the reforms he proposed were rejected by referendum with 52.41% voting against. But instead, he has clung to power at all costs, continuing to appoint governments that lacked a majority in the National Assembly. The result is therefore logical: from motions of no confidence to lost confidence votes, Prime Ministers and their governments succeed each other so quickly that there’s no time to even memorize who is minister of what. All this creates political instability unseen in the entire history of the Fifth Republic.
For a government that wants to implement drastic austerity measures at the expense of the poorest and weakest to reduce the country’s massive deficit, while the President has only a 15% approval rating and his Prime Minister—14% (making him the most unpopular French Prime Minister of all time), and without a parliamentary majority, is suicide.
Abolishing two public holidays, freezing social benefits that many people depend on to survive, and demanding that people tighten their belts, while the state squanders money on aid for the rich and large corporations (which costs more than it brings in), on useless “Théodule committees,” on contributions to the European Union budget (where France is the second largest net contributor after Germany), and on financial and military aid to Ukraine, could only end in disaster.
As a result, the French have had enough and plan to demonstrate their discontent on September 10, 2025. It is therefore unsurprising that François Bayrou proposed this confidence vote on September 8, two days prior. The goal was to lose this vote and try to divert public anger by using Bayrou as a fuse, hoping his resignation would lower the level of protest on September 10.
But in reality, it is Emmanuel Macron himself who is the focus of public anger. The French are tired of his arrogant remarks, his behavior like a petulant teenager, and the disastrous consequences of his policies. France’s budget deficit currently stands at nearly 100 billion euros, or 5.8% of GDP, well above the 3% limit set by the European Union for eurozone countries. As for the national debt, it exceeds 3,200 billion euros, or 114% of GDP, and annual interest payments are expected to surpass 77 billion dollars. And despite this monstrous hole in the treasury, France sent over 2 billion euros in military aid to Ukraine in 2024, plus its share of the multiple EU aid packages, the latest of which, paid at the end of August 2025, amounted to 4 billion euros!
So when François Bayrou plays the catastrophist and tries to make people believe that the problem is the French spending too much to maintain the post-war social model, it’s a hard pill to swallow. Because people are well aware that they are not the ones who decided the country’s economic policy, but rather Emmanuel Macron and his successive governments.
The result in the National Assembly is unequivocal: out of 589 MPs, 573 were present to vote, and 364 voted against confidence in François Bayrou’s government. Only 194 MPs voted to support him, and 15 abstained.
And so now that François Bayrou will resign tomorrow as announced, if public mobilization remains strong on September 10, the debate on Emmanuel Macron’s resignation will begin in earnest.
Christelle Néant
