French PM Michel Barnier loses no confidence vote and is expected to resign

Paris: French lawmakers passed a no-confidence measure against Prime Minister Michel Barnier and his Cabinet on Wednesday, sending the country into a fresh spasm of political turmoil that leaves it without a clear path to a new budget and threatens to further jolt financial markets.

France’s lower house of Parliament passed the measure with 331 votes, well above the majority of 288 votes that were required, after Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally joined moves by the chamber’s leftist coalition to oust the government. Barnier is expected to resign soon.

The vote comes at a difficult time for France, which is struggling with high debt and a widening deficit, challenges that have been compounded by two years of flat growth.

President Emmanuel Macron, the nation’s top leader, remains in power, but support for him is shaky. His stature has been severely diminished following his surprise decision in the summer to call a snap parliamentary election. His party and its allies lost many seats to the far right and the left, competing forces that bitterly oppose him.

Barnier is likely to remain as a caretaker until Macron names a new prime minister, but France faces weeks of instability, just as it did after the parliamentary vote.

The rapid fall seemed inevitable after Barnier used a constitutional tool to force through a budget proposal Monday without the approval of Parliament’s lower house, where he does not hold a majority. Use of that tool always raises the hackles of France’s lawmakers.

But Wednesday, it did far more, providing the glue for an unlikely alliance between the assembly’s leftist coalition and the nationalist, anti-immigrant National Rally, which holds the most seats for a single party in the chamber.

Barnier’s budget proposal is now null and void. In what amounted to his farewell speech to the chamber Wednesday, he said that the no-confidence vote would “make everything more difficult and more serious,” noting that without a new budget, more households would be subject to taxes and others would see their taxes go up.

“We need to get beyond our divisions to support our country,” he added.

The downfall of Barnier and his Cabinet was a victory for Le Pen, who has tried for years to project her growing political influence and to bring her party into the mainstream.