(Bloomberg) -- President Emmanuel Macron said he thinks the French government can survive a no-confidence vote on Wednesday, when the far-right party of Marine Le Pen is expected to join forces with a left-wing coalition to topple the administration.
The president’s remarks come a day before the National Assembly will hold the vote in Paris, which was triggered over a budget dispute. Le Pen said this week that she’ll support any motion to bring down the government.
For the National Rally to support the no-confidence motion “would be a vote of unbearable cynicism,” Macron told reporters in Riyadh on Tuesday. “I can’t believe that they’d vote for the” leftist alliance’s motion.
Prime Minister Michel Barnier used a constitutional mechanism on Monday to force through an unpopular budget bill, leading the National Rally and the leftist coalition to call for the votes of no confidence. Le Pen moved forward with the motion even after Barnier submitted to nearly all of the National Rally’s demands to change the budget legislation.
If the government were to collapse on Wednesday, it would underscore the power acquired by Le Pen since Macron called a surprise election in June. It would also mark the shortest tenure for a premier since France’s Fifth Republic was founded in 1958.
What Bloomberg Economics Says...
“Le Pen might prefer political chaos to stability to put pressure on Macron to resign.”
—Antonio Barroso, Eleonora Mavroeidi and Jamie Rush. For full insight, click here
Lawmakers in Paris will begin debating the motions at 4 p.m. in Paris Wednesday, with the voting to start shortly thereafter.
The political chaos has driven bond investors to punish France’s sovereign debt relative to its peers, pushing borrowing costs at one point last week to match Greece’s and leading Barnier to warn of a “storm” in financial markets if he is dismissed from power.
Investors have fretted for months over France’s political difficulties, just as the government has been trying to push measures that will reduce its unwieldy deficit. The budget bill initially presented by Barnier’s government contained €60 billion ($63.1 billion) of tax increases and spending cuts that aimed for a sharp adjustment in the deficit to 5% of economic output in 2025 from an estimated 6.1% this year.
A government collapse so close to the end of the year would take France into unchartered territory. The outgoing administration, acting in a caretaker capacity, could use emergency laws to collect taxes and guarantee a minimal level of spending, but the economic and financial impact is hard to predict.
The current finance minister, Antoine Armand, warned earlier Tuesday that stopgap legislation would raise taxes for millions of households and block planned spending increases for some priorities, including security and farming.
But Macron expressed confidence that politicians voting on Wednesday would step back from the brink.
“The only question that politicians today need to ask themselves is how they can be useful to the country and to the French people,” Macron said in Riyadh. “Not how they can be useful to their own ambitions or their own interests.”
If the government is voted down, ministers remain in place with a caretaker status to manage current affairs, potentially including the emergency legislation to avoid a shutdown. It would then be up to Macron to appoint a new prime minister, although there is no constitutional deadline for his decision.
The president, meantime, said he wouldn’t resign until his full term had ended. While the left has called on Macron to step down, he can’t be forced out of his job. The next presidential election is set for 2027 and Le Pen remains the frontrunner, according to polls.
“I’ve been elected twice by the French people, and I’m extremely proud of that,” Macron said. “I’ll honor that trust with all my energy, right up to the last second, to be useful to the country.”
(Updates with Macron comment in the 12th paragraph.)
©2024 Bloomberg L.P.