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PARIS, Dec 4 (Reuters) – French lawmakers passed a no-confidence vote against the government on Wednesday, throwing the European Union’s second-biggest economic power deeper into a crisis that threatens its capacity to legislate and tame a massive budget deficit.
Lawmakers joined forces to back a no-confidence motion against Prime Minister Michel Barnier, with a majority 331 votes in support of the motion.
Barnier now has to tender his resignation and that of his government to President Emmanuel Macron, making his minority government’s three-month tenure the shortest lived in France’s Fifth Republic beginning in 1958. He is expected to do so on Thursday morning, French media reported.
Lawmakers punished Barnier for using special constitutional powers to adopt part of an unpopular budget without a final vote in parliament, where it lacked majority support. The draft budget had sought 60 billion euros ($63.07 billion) in savings in a drive to shrink a gaping deficit.
“This (deficit) reality will not disappear by the magic of a motion of censure,” Barnier told lawmakers ahead of the vote, adding the budget deficit would come back to haunt whichever government comes next.
No French government had lost a confidence vote since Georges Pompidou’s in 1962. Macron ushered in the crisis by calling a snap election in June that delivered a polarised parliament. With its president diminished, France now risks ending the year without a stable government or a 2025 budget, although the constitution allows special measures that would avert a U.S.-style government shutdown.
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