Paris
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That was a well-known question from France’s wartime leader and former president, Charles des Gare. “How can anyone govern a country with 246 types of cheese?” More than 60 years later, it appears that the answer is not.
Still another government is on the brink of which France appears to be inorbitable. On Monday, François Bailloux, who has less than a year of his job, is set to become the fourth prime minister, leaving in just 20 months. His fate is now based on a vote of trust in Congress, and if lost, he has solidified his records under the Fifth Republic, weakening President Emmanuel Macron more than ever.
Bayrou has called for a vote to push forward with an unpopular savings plan of 44 billion euros, including two open holidays and frozen spending. He says it’s a matter of “national survival.” France warns that France must take on spiral debt in that it “sees debt rise by 12 million euros every day, an hour every day.”
These may be alarming terms designed to drive the country’s fierce political class into urgent action, despite budget reforms claiming the scalp of his predecessor, Michel Barnier. The European Union’s chief negotiator, who maintained Bloc United in the wake of the UK’s tortured vote to leave the European Union in 2016, lasted just three months as a PM, and was unable to get the French to climb to accept the sweep cuts.
Its borrowing costs have risen as France slips deep into political instability. The 10-year bond yield exceeded the yields of bonds in Spain, Portugal and Greece, which were once at the heart of the eurozone debt crisis, and is now at the heart of the Italian debt crisis. An economy is at odds with the image of the strongman in Europe that Macron was trying to project.
Still, the current instability can be traced back to Macron’s dramatic decision to call last year’s SNAP election. The French president challenged the prominent results of the far-right national assembly in the May 2024 European elections, forcing a parliamentary vote in which his own party lost seats on the far right and far left, leaving France with a divided parliament.
But there was no need to do this. Founded in 1958 by President Degaard, the Fifth Republic was designed to end the chronic instability that plagued France’s third and fourth republics in the early 20th century. The new constitution has created a majority system to give executives broad powers and avoid short-lived governments. As a result, for decades, two mainstream actors on the left and right alternated power.
Macron blasted that order in 2017 and became the first president elected without the support of a major established political party. He was re-elected in 2022 and soon lost a majority in Congress due to extreme crowds of voters. Two years of fragile rules continued, and Macron repeatedly enforced Article 49.3 of the Constitution. It promoted the law without votes, increasing the dissatisfaction of many opposition lawmakers and the French people.
In the 2024 SNAP election, the left won most seats in the second round, but still hadn’t reached a majority after the far right ruled the first. However, when Macron refused to accept the Prime Minister’s choice, their hopes of forming a minority government collapsed. Unlike Germany and Italy, France does not have a tradition of coalition building, and its politics were shaped for over 60 years by a system dominated by the presidency.
If Bayrou falls, pressure on Macron to resign will intensify, but he has vowed to offer a term. The far-right Doyenne Marine Le Pen has called for him to dissolve Parliament, but a new election will almost certainly strengthen her party and Parliament. Another path is to compare Minister Gerald Dalmanin for his likely addictive Chalice, while Macron overwhelmingly appointed successors to Justice Minister Sebastian Recorne and Minister Gerald Dalmanin.
The problem is that after the three centralist prime ministers fail, the opposition parties are not in the mood to give another person a chance. Both the far right and far left inform them that they will immediately seek a lack of confidence vote. Another option is to cite the Prime Minister from another political family, but the choice on the right is blocked on the left and vice versa.
The political situation is bleak. If another Snap Congressional election occurs, a recent Elabe poll shows that national rallies appear above, with the left in second place and the center in a distant third.
Many now assume that the far right will ultimately take power. If not now, I have little hope for the next presidential poll in 2027. The public’s trust in the political class has collapsed and anger is set to blow away on the streets on September 10th.
All of this comes at the worst moments of rage in Ukraine and the Middle East. Paris’ instability is a gift for both Russian President Vladimir Putin and US Donald Trump, who shares a common joy in laughing at European weaknesses.
Dominique Mosy, senior analyst at Montaigne at the Paris-based think tank Institute, says he can’t remember such a deep deadlock moment in the Fifth Republic.
“Degaard survived an attempted assassination and there was the Algerian War.
“A change in the regime sounds inevitable, but we don’t know how it will happen or who will do the work. We are in the transition stage between a system that no longer works and a system that no one can imagine.”
Degaard was president and despite his tweets about cheese, he entered a period of relative stability with the launch of France’s fifth republic in 1958. The question is whether Macron will become the president who ended it.
