France’s government lived to see another day on Wednesday, after it survived a no-confidence vote in Parliament and gave the recently appointed prime minister a temporary reprieve from months of political turmoil and the country a promise of stability, at least in the short term.
The no-confidence motion was supported by only 128 lawmakers in the 577-seat National Assembly, France’s lower house, short of the absolute majority required. Had it passed, the motion would have forced the centrist prime minister, François Bayrou, and his cabinet to resign.
The motion’s failure ensures safe passage of a 2025 budget bill that France needs badly — it has been operating with temporary stopgap funding since the start of the year — and that the government hopes will rein in the country’s surging debt and deficit, with a goal of generating 50 billion euros in savings through tax increases and spending cuts.
The budget bill now goes to the Senate for final approval on Thursday. On Wednesday, Mr. Bayou passed through a second no-confidence motion, triggered by another budget bill on health care and other social security expenses.
Mr. Bayrou’s bigger problem of running a government in hostile territory has not been solved. The lower house is deeply divided, with a centrist-conservative bloc that supports him and two main opposition wings — a tenuous alliance of left-wing parties called the New Popular Front and the anti-immigrant far-right National Rally party — that do not.
But the vote and the new budget will for now give one of Europe’s leading economies a semblance of stability. Mr. Bayrou, a centrist ally of President Emmanuel Macron, was appointed just over a month ago — the fourth prime minister in a year, unusual for France.
“He is living day to day, taking one step after another,” said Rémi Lefebvre, a professor of political science at the University of Lille. “But there are other tests coming,” he added. “I don’t believe in the longevity of the Bayrou government, but for now, he’s buying time.”
Mr. Bayrou, listing challenges including the war in Ukraine and President Trump’s aggressive, no-holds-barred foreign policy, told lawmakers on Wednesday that France could not afford to confront “advancing tsunamis” by “worsening our weaknesses and our divisions.”
France, he said, “must recover its strength, its solidarity and its pride.”
To see the budget through, Mr. Bayrou used a constitutional provision that pushes a bill through the National Assembly without a final vote but exposes him to a no-confidence motion. French governments often use that tool when they do not have a majority to back a bill, although critics say that it is an unfair tactic to strong-arm lawmakers and that governments under Mr. Macron have used it profusely.
Michel Barnier, Mr. Bayrou’s predecessor, used the same provision in December but was ousted.
The no-confidence motion on Wednesday was put forward by the hard-left France Unbowed party. This time, Mr. Bayrou avoided the same fate as Mr. Barnier’s by actively courting and negotiating with the Socialist Party, which decided to abstain from supporting the no-confidence motion despite cries of treason from its allies in the New Popular Front.
He has also benefited from the temporary benevolence of National Rally, which also announced this week that it would not vote for the no-confidence motion.
Both parties denounced the budget as bad. But both also argued that a bad budget was better than no budget at all and that prolonging political instability was irresponsible.
The Socialist Party chose to wrest whatever concessions it could in the budget — for instance, by ensuring that 4,000 teaching positions would not be cut.
“We are clearheaded; these advances don’t make this budget a fair one,” Emmanuel Grégoire, a Socialist lawmaker, told the lower house on Wednesday as he defended his party’s position. But without a budget, he added, France is “weakened and without resources.”
“Even a bad budget is used to fund public services, support the economy, make investments and finance our national defense,” Mr. Grégoire said. Still, he added, the Socialist Party had “neither indulgence nor complacency” for Mr. Bayrou’s government and remained firmly in the opposition.
To make that point, the Socialists will put forward a separate no-confidence motion in the coming weeks over criticism that the government was fostering a “Trumpification of public debate” — most notably after Mr. Bayrou said last week that immigration in France had created a “feeling of submersion” in the country. The comments sparked criticism from the left that he was echoing far-right talking points.
The Socialist Party’s decision to negotiate with the government and to let it survive has slightly changed the dynamic in Parliament, releasing Mr. Bayrou from the grip that the far-right held on his predecessor and helping the Socialists stand out in the New Popular Front.
“They are back in the political game,” said Mr. Lefebvre, the analyst.
But the Socialists’ calculus was met with derision among other members of the left-wing alliance, which has the most seat numbers in the lower house but has been increasingly torn by internal divisions.
“There is only one way of expressing your opposition to the budget, only one way of expressing your opposition to the government, and that’s voting a no-confidence motion,” Aurélie Trouvé, a France Unbowed lawmaker, told the lower house on Wednesday.
The Socialist Party’s future no-confidence motion is expected to fail as well because it is unlikely to receive support on the right and the far right. But it underscores the fact that the success of Mr. Bayrou’s government on Wednesday was fragile.
It must still navigate a fractured political landscape where both the left-wing alliance and the National Rally can pull the trigger on a no-confidence motion when it suits them.
Some have compared Mr. Bayrou to a condominium board trustee — with the power to keep the building running and resolve small squabbles, but nothing more.
“His dilemma is that he can’t give off the sense he’s inactive and doing nothing,” said Benjamin Morel, a lecturer in public law at Panthéon-Assas University in Paris. “But he doesn’t have the means of getting that agenda adopted, because today any bill that is fundamentally controversial risks bringing down the government.”
That conundrum comes at a particularly delicate time for France, which is currently one of the most financially troubled countries in Europe. Its ballooning debt and deficit have unsettled financial markets.
The government aims to rein in the public deficit to 5.4 percent of gross domestic product in 2025, down from 6.1 percent in 2024, through a mix of government spending cuts and tax increases, including a temporary one-year tax on France’s wealthiest households and most profitable companies.
The new budget also includes increased taxes on plane tickets, a special one-year tax on maritime shipping companies and cuts to several government budgets — including the environment, culture and labor ministries.
The High Council of Public Finance, an official body given the task of assessing the government’s economic and budgetary forecasts, said in a report last week that the new budget would “kick-start the much-needed deficit reduction trajectory” but offered “little leeway,” with an “reachable but slightly optimistic” government goal of reaching 0.9 percent growth in 2025.
