French Prime Minister Francois Bayrou has failed in a vote of confidence against him, reports the BBC.

The fall of 74-year-old Prime Minister Francois Bayrou seemed inevitable, as the National Assembly is more divided than ever, while Bayrou is a man of compromise. The current leaders of French politics are unwilling to compromise.

The legislature has been deadlocked for more than a year. Bayrou sought to end this situation by calling for a vote of confidence against himself. He said he wanted to use it as a kind of shock therapy to shake up politicians and get them to cooperate in the fight against the runaway public debt (France's public debt currently stands at 114 percent of GDP).

Moreover, indebtedness is not just a French internal matter; if the second largest economy in the EU goes into crisis, the eurozone will also feel it.

Bayrou's decision may indeed be the last straw, as the parliamentary deadlock has so far prevented the prime minister, who is in a minority government, from pushing his budget reduction plans through parliament.

However, even at the moment of the announcement, the majority gave Bayrou a greater chance that with this move, he would be signing a political death warrant for himself and the government.

This was highly likely because in June 2024, Emmanuel Macron, after his party suffered a heavy defeat in the EP elections, tried to escape and called early elections. Macron was confident that the voters would vote for the ruling party, but this did not happen, instead the far right and the far left overtook him and the ruling party was reduced to a minority in the legislature.

From then on, the National Assembly finds itself in a lame duck situation, and it is no coincidence that in Bayrou, it has consumed the second prime minister since last September.

That the prime minister's prospects are not very good was also clearly shown by the huge ovation that Marine Le Pen, the current leader of the strongest parliamentary faction, received when she demanded new elections during the debate before the vote. The opposition seems united on this, and according to the leader of the Greens faction, Bayrou's departure is a relief. According to the Socialists, only one person is responsible for the country's crisis, Emmanuel Macron.

The big question is what happens after this. Of course, Macron will have to appoint a new prime minister (his fifth in two years), but to do so he will have to find a candidate who is acceptable to at least part of the opposition, and this will not be easy. Moreover, it is unlikely that calling new elections, as Le Pen has been chanting, would change the balance of power much, and ultimately it is not worth neglecting the fact that no matter how many prime ministers the National Assembly dismisses, the national debt will remain on their shoulders.