PARIS: A day after the French Prime Minister Michel Barnier’s government was toppled by a no-confidence move, President Emmanuel Macron announced on Thursday that he would appoint a new prime minister in the coming days.
The top priority of the incoming premier will be to get a 2025 budget adopted by parliament, he stressed.
In a televised address to the nation, Macron said he would name a successor to Barnier “in the coming days.”
“The priority will be the budget,” Macron said.
A special law to roll over the 2024 budget and avoid any gap will be put forward by mid-December. Then the new government will prepare a full budget early next year, in particular to account for inflation, for a vote by parliament.
Macron, whose ill-fated decision to call a snap ballot in June delivered a much-divided parliament, denied he was responsible for the political crisis.
The president, who represents a centrist party, said the far-right and left-wing parties united in an “anti-republican front” to create “a mess” by ousting Barnier.
Macron has been weakened by the crisis but resisted calls by some in the opposition for him to resign. He reaffirmed that he will stay in office until his term ends in May 2027.
“The mandate you have given me is for five years and I will fulfil it until the very end,” he said.
In a 10-minute speech, he added that the new government should represent a variety of parties willing to take part in it or at least agree not to censure it. He did not say which ones.
Meanwhile, Macron has asked Barnier and his government to stay in a caretaker capacity until a new government is formed.
Any new prime minister will face the same challenge of dealing with a fractured parliament that Barnier did, notably passing a budget at a time when France needs to rein in its public finances.
Michel Barnier, a veteran conservative, became the shortest-serving prime minister in modern French history when he resigned on Thursday after parliament voted him out over his fiscal plans, barely three months after he was appointed.
