French Politics - 2025
France’s political landscape has shifted dramatically. In late August 2025 0prime minister Bayroucalled for a parliamentary confidence vote in his government – and its budget – which will take place on September 8. The prime minister was all but certain to lose the vote, forcing his resignation and leaving France, once again, without a government or a financial plan.
After the baffling 2024 dissolution that resulted in a hung parliament, the French prime minister's had just six days to convince the opposition parties that hold his fate in their hands that he was right to preempt a raucous showdown over his austerity budget and call a vote of confidence next Monday. Like with Emmanuel Macron a year ago, François Bayrou didn’t have to put his neck on the line. But he did.
And if all went to script on September 8, the centrist 74-year-old mainstay of French politics would have to make way for Macron's fifth prime minister since his re-election in 2022. While French Prime Minister François Bayrou has been saying he has not taken a summer holiday since he's been trying to find an answer to France's budgetary crisis, the PM may instead be taking forced holidays in September after his government falls. Smith, who is a historian of modern France at Queen Mary University of London, says the "parliamentary logic just is not there" to support Bayrou.
Why the seemingly self-inflicted crisis? What are the president's options? The far left and far right want the term-limited Macron to resign. Is it about the man or the system? The vote was only the start of it. Trade unions have latched onto a Yellow Vests-style day of action called for September 10. Where it will lead? It's hard to say, in a nation where critics quip that citizens prefer revolution to reform. We ask about a country that fared better than most during Covid but never shut the tap after on stimulus spending. Rising borrowing costs on French debt show that for markets and jittery neighbours, it's time to pay the piper.
In France, governments can invoke Article 49.3 of the Constitution to force a bill through the National Assembly, the lower house of parliament, without a vote. The mechanism has existed since 1958 and is legal, but risky: once Article 49.3 is triggered, opposition lawmakers have 24 hours to file a no-confidence motion. If that motion passes, the government falls. Bayrou’s decision to use 49.3 turned his €44 billion austerity plan into a survival gamble.
Bayrou chose confrontation over compromise. By tying his austerity program directly to a confidence vote, he hoped to project resolve. The package included unpopular measures such as cutting public holidays and raising healthcare charges. Instead of rallying deputies behind him, the move united nearly every opposition faction. The far-right National Rally, the Socialists, and the leftist France Unbowed all declared they would vote him out, filing no-confidence motions that set up a showdown on Monday. What was meant to be a show of strength turned into political suicide.
If Bayrou fells, Macron was left exposed: he’s going to have to pick between two bad options. He can install a Socialist prime minister to get a budget through arliament, effectively conceding control of domestic policy. Or he can gamble on snap elections, which polls suggest would hand more seats to Le Pen’s National Rally. With Macron’s approval ratings already scraping historic lows, either choice would deepen the sense of a weakened presidency. Commentators warn that if markets lose confidence in France’s ability to control its 5.4% of GDP deficit and 110% debt-to-GDP ratio, the country could face a crisis reminiscent of Britain’s “mini-budget” turmoil under Liz Truss.
A grassroots protest movement that began on social media is gathering steam with its rallying cry to "Block everything" ("Bloquons tout”) in France on September 10. Organisers hope to bring the country to a standstill to protest Prime Minister François Bayrou’s national budget plan – even though the current government may fall before the demonstrations begin.
The citizens collective, which has about 20 organisers according to French newspaper Le Parisien, says it is independent of political parties and unions. On social media platforms X, TikTok, Telegram and Facebook, its message has taken off with supporters sharing visuals under the hashtags #10septembre2025 and #10septembre. The trigger for such widespread discontent is Bayrou’s 2026 financial plan aiming to slash €43.8 million from the national budget and reduce France’s spiralling deficit. Among the most controversial austerity measures are plans to remove two national holidays, a freeze on pensions and €5 billion in health cuts.
The collective listed a wide range of demands including massive reinvestment in public services, an end to job cuts, and for all public holidays to be maintained. But the government is not the only target for the organisers’ discontent. Recommended forms of protest include boycotting major retailers such as Carrefour, Amazon and Auchan, withdrawing money from major banks and the “peaceful occupation of symbolic locations” such as local government administrative buildings and town halls. A social media post linked to the movement viewed more than 1.5 million times calls on supporters to help “stop the machine” that is crushing “worn out, invisible” citizens.
On September 10, they write, “we won’t pay anymore, we won’t consume anymore, we won’t work anymore, and we will keep our children at home. Our only power is a total boycott”. Other forms of suggested action call for solidarity such as creating strike funds, organising neighbourhood assemblies, and supporting protestors who engage in acts of civil disobedience.
It may be frustration over plans to cut two public holidays that ignited calls for protest, “but the movement is much broader”, says Paul Smith, head of the department of Modern Languages at the University of Nottingham, UK. “It’s become about the idea of people feeling left behind.” There are echoes of the 2018 Yellow Vest (gilets jaunes) protest, which began with social media users venting frustration over rising petrol prices but grew to encompass street protests that attracted tens of thousands frustrated by a broad sense of economic injustice. The Yellow Vest movement was not affiliated with any specific political party or union and had no single leader. Its emblem was instead the florescent yellow vest that French law requires all drivers to have in their vehicles and which protestors wore en masse during demonstrations.
While the organisers of Block everything have said the movement is apolitical, questions have emerged over its origins. The first post calling for a September 10 protest appeared in May – well before Bayrou had announced his budget – posted by anti-government group, Les Essentiels France. As little is known about who runs the group or what its affiliations are, “it's always worth being alert to the possibility of manipulation, especially by foreign interests”, says Andrew W M Smith. Online support for the idea of a September 10 protest surged after Bayrou’s budget announcement in July, with figures on extreme right quick to align themselves with the burgeoning movement.
Since then, the movement has garnered widespread support from left-wing parties, spearheaded by the firebrand leader of the France Unbowed party, Jean-Luc Mélenchon. “Much like the Yellow Vests there have been plenty of people willing to try and own some of the political dynamism and force of the movement by attaching themselves to it,” says Andrew WM Smith.
An alignment with the left fits the profile of the average supporter of the movement, according to a survey published on Monday by French think-tank Fondation Jean-Jaurès. Among more than 1,000 supporters interviewed in mid-August, 69% said they had voted for Mélenchon’s hard-left party in the first round of the 2022 presidential election, compared with 22% of the population as a whole. Just 2% said they had voted for President Emmanuel Macron and 3% for hard-right leader Marine Le Pen in the same election.
The survey found that despite apparent similarities with the Yellow Vest movement, Block everything’s supporters are less focused on economic insecurity, and more on “strong politicisation and a desire to engage on behalf of collective interests”.
Most major union chiefs have so far refused to align themselves with Block everything, despite sharing many of their political concerns. A petition launched by five major unions against Bayrou’s budget on July 22 has so far amassed more than 375,000 signatures. "The horror show that is the draft budget must be abandoned," CFDT union chief Marylise Léon on Friday, even though her union will not participate in the September 10 protests.
Only the hard-left CGT union has said it will support Block everything by organising strikes on September 10. The inter-union group has instead called for “major strikes and protests” on September 18 – an announcement that is unlikely to take the wind out of Block everything’s sails. Compared with a formal union strike, September 10’s grassroots protest is, “much less controlled, and much less organised”, says Paul Smith. “That makes stopping it really quite difficult.”
In the vote 08 September 2024 in the National Assembly, 364 deputies voted that they had no confidence in the government while just 194 gave it their confidence. While French lawmakers overwhelmingly votedto oust Bayrou and his government, many are concerned that France is becoming increasingly unstable politically. François Bayrou became the first premier in the history of modern France to be ousted in a confidence vote rather than a no-confidence vote. The Élysée Palace said that President Emmanuel Macron had "taken note" of the National Assembly's decision to overturn the government of François Bayrou, saying that a new prime minister would be named "in the next few days".
Green Party leader Marine Tondelier has called on French President Emmanuel Macron to meet with representatives from the left-wing New Popular Front (NFP) before naming a prime minister. The NFP alliance won the largest number of seats in last year's legislative elections, though still fell far short of a majority in parliament.
Since then, the centre-left Socialist Party and the left-wing France Unbowed have struggled to swallow their deep political differences. The gulf between them widened following the Socialists' decision earlier this year not to support a left-wing no-confidence vote in Prime Minister François Bayrou that would have prevented the passage of his 2025 budget.
Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the figurehead of the left-wing France Unbowed party, hailed the National Assembly's decision to topple François Bayrou's government as a "victory". "Bayrou has fallen. Victory and relief for the people," he wrote on social media. "Macron is now on the front line facing the people. He too must go."
French far right leader Marine Le Pen called for French President Emmanuel Macron to once again dissolve the National Assembly and call fresh legislative elections. "Everything suggests legally, politically, even morally, that dissolution is not an option for (Macron), but an obligation," she said.
As expected, French President Emmanuel Macron chose Defense Minister Sebastien Lecornu as the country's new prime minister on 09 Septembe 2025. His appointment, hours after the resignation of Francois Bayrou signals Macron's intent to maintain a minority government. The 39-year-old Lecornu was in the running for the job back in December before Macron opted for the supposedly steady experience of the older Bayrou. Once a member of the center-right Republicans, Lecornu joined Macron's centrist movement in 2017 and led the president's re-election campaign in 2022. Macron has directed Lecornu "to consult the political forces represented in parliament with a view to adopting a budget for the nation and making the agreements essential for the decisions of the coming months," the Elysee announced.
|
NEWSLETTER
|
| Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list |
|
|
|
