France’s government faces the imminent loss of a vote of confidence

LESS THAN RNGDPRNRNRNthree months after it was appointed, Michel Barnier’s minority government looks to be on the way out. On December 2nd the French prime minister used an emergency provision of the constitution, known as 49.3, to force the social-security part of his budget through parliament without a vote. This prompted the left-wing alliance to table a motion of no-confidence, which Marine Le Pen’s hard-right National Rally () party immediately said it would back. That vote is expected to take place on December 4th. Together, an unholy alliance of the left and the hard right has the parliamentary numbers needed to bring the government down.Until the last moment, the conservative Mr Barnier, who successfully handled the European Union’s Brexit deal, tried to find the compromises needed to get this part of the budget through. It is part of a broader package of €60bn ($63bn) of tax rises and spending cuts, designed to bring down the deficit from 6.1% of in 2024 to 5% next year. The prime minister ceded ground to some demands made by Ms Le Pen’s , notably by cancelling tax rises on electricity bills and cuts to medical reimbursements. But he balked at her final request, to annul a planned delay in raising state pensions in line with inflation. For the , which with its friends holds 140 seats in the 577-seat lower house and is enjoying its moment as the pivotal parliamentary force, Mr Barnier’s concessions were not enough. “The French have had enough,” Ms Le Pen declared.France is now bracing itself for a situation most of its politicians have never experienced. The last time the National Assembly brought down a government was in 1962. “The French will not forgive us if we put individual interests before that of the nation,” Mr Barnier pleaded to deputies in the chamber. His words, though, are likely to fall on deaf ears. Having until now sought to prove that the is not a party of protest but a government-in-waiting, Ms Le Pen is under fresh pressure from her voters—and in the courts. In a ruling due next March in a case concerning the misuse of European Parliament funds, she could be ruled ineligible to stand for public office for five years. “She doesn’t want to be the architect of chaos,” says an RN deputy, “but our base won’t understand if she is the one who saves Barnier’s skin.”If, as now seems probable, the government falls this week, Mr Barnier and his ministers could stay on in a caretaker role; but the entire budget would fall with him. To keep the state ticking over, he would be able to use special provisions to prolong the measures in the 2024 budget, without inflation adjustments, into 2025. The task of trying to pass a fresh budget in 2025 would then pass to a new government. The uncertainty about France’s ability to get its public finances in order is unsettling markets. On December 2nd the spread of French ten-year sovereign bonds over Germany’s ten-year benchmark bond widened slightly to 0.88 percentage points, close to its highest level since 2012.As for President Emmanuel Macron, if he loses his third prime minister in one year he will be back where he was in July, after rashly calling and losing snap legislative elections: in search of someone who can govern with a deadlocked parliament. He cannot call fresh parliamentary elections until July next year. The president could re-appoint Mr Barnier, though in that case a new vote of confidence would doubtless soon follow. Or he could look instead for a figure on the centre-left who might command broader support. The left-wing alliance, which reaches from the Trotskyist hard left to the moderate social-democratic left, is the single biggest bloc in parliament, though is also itself well short of a majority. Some figures from the Macronist camp think that a moderate Socialist could secure backing from the centre and centre-right. Either way, the options do not look good, and France is set for yet another spell of political instability at the worst possible time.