Macron to Pick New Prime Minister in Coming Days. What Comes Next?

After Prime Minister Michel Barnier lost a no-confidence vote in Parliament, President Emmanuel Macron castigated his political opposition for “choosing disorder” and said he would not resign.

President Emmanuel Macron of France said on Thursday that he would appoint a new prime minister in the coming days, after the government lost a no-confidence vote in Parliament.

“We can’t afford division or inaction,” Mr. Macron said in a televised address to the nation. He also declared that he would not resign, as some politicians on both sides of the aisle have demanded.

France’s current prime minister, Michel Barnier, is staying on in a caretaker role after being forced to resign, leaving the country in political turmoil and without a budget for the new year.

It was the first successful no-confidence vote in France in over 60 years, and it made Mr. Barnier’s three-month-old government the shortest-tenured in modern French history.

Finding a prime minister who can withstand the political challenges will not be easy. France is deeply polarized, and the lower house of Parliament could try to bring down any new government.

The no-confidence vote came at a difficult time for France. The country is struggling with high debt and a widening deficit. Its strong backing for Ukraine faces a challenge with the election of Donald J. Trump in the United States, and its partner in leading Europe, Germany, is weaker politically and economically than it has been in years.

And Mr. Macron himself is unpopular.

What happens next?

Mr. Macron can appoint whomever he likes as the new prime minister — it does not need to be someone from the biggest party in Parliament. Until then, as caretaker prime minister, Mr. Barnier will have a somewhat limited role.

No legal texts detail what those limits are, but French jurists agree that a caretaker government can’t propose laws or draw up a budget. It can, however, issue decrees to apply existing laws, and it can take care of matters like paying workers and distributing pensions.

A caretaker government can act more forcefully if there is an emergency, suggesting that Mr. Barnier could take measures to avoid a budget crisis in 2025 if no new government is appointed by the end of this year.

The bottom line is that there is a lot of uncertainty, particularly about how to deal with France’s financial woes.

The country’s large debt and deficit “will not disappear by enchantment,” Mr. Barnier warned lawmakers on Wednesday.

How does the French government work?

Lawmakers in the lower house are directly chosen by the electorate, as is the president.

The prime minister and cabinet are accountable to the lower house, and they determine the country’s domestic policies, including the budget. But they are appointed by the president, who has extensive executive powers of his own.

Most of the time, the president and prime minister are politically aligned. France usually holds presidential and legislative elections every five years within weeks of each other, making it likely that voters will support the same party each time. In that scenario — as happened for Mr. Macron’s first term — the president has a strong majority and a supportive prime minister.

But Mr. Macron’s decision to call snap elections last summer upended that cycle. His coalition lost badly and the lower house has no single dominant party, leaving him with the difficult task of appointing a prime minister acceptable both to him and to a majority of lawmakers in the chamber.

When a single opposition party controls the lower house, the equation is simpler: The president appoints the leader of that opposition as prime minister, and the two undergo what is known as a “cohabitation.” That has happened before, and, though it is uncomfortable for the president, it is relatively stable.

But a divided situation like the current one is much rarer — and much more fragile.

What led to the crisis?

The no-confidence motion was filed this week after Mr. Barnier pushed a social security spending bill through the lower house of Parliament without a final vote.

The motion was filed by an alliance of left-wing parties called the New Popular Front and was supported by Marine Le Pen’s nationalist, anti-immigrant National Rally party and its allies.

With 331 votes in favor, the motion easily cleared the 288-vote threshold — more than half of the total number of lawmakers elected to the lower house — to succeed.

In his speech on Thursday, Mr. Macron castigated his political opposition for toppling Mr. Barnier and for “choosing disorder.”

“I know that some are tempted to make me responsible for this situation,” he said, referring to his decision to call snap elections this summer. But, he said, “I will never shoulder the irresponsibility of others.”

How did France get here?

After the snap elections, instead of naming a politician from the leftist coalition that won the most seats, Mr. Macron called on Mr. Barnier, a figure from the traditional centrist right. The coalition was furious.

“We knew from Day 1 that he was going to fall,” Mathilde Panot, a lawmaker for the leftist France Unbowed party, told reporters on Wednesday. Mr. Barnier’s appointment, she said, “was a provocation against the French people’s vote.”

Since then, Mr. Barnier has been living “the hell of Matignon,” a phrase used by political commentators to describe the difficulties of reigning from the Matignon palace, the seat of the government where a prime minister has some power, but hardly all of it. That was especially true for Mr. Barnier, who had to work with a bitterly divided lower house of Parliament.

Mr. Barnier was supported by a tenuous coalition of conservatives from his own party and centrists who support Mr. Macron. But he was unable to fend off challenges from the left and far right against his budget, a $60 billion mix of spending cuts and tax increases.

What about the budget?

Legal experts are divided over whether the no-confidence vote has buried the budget bills for good or if Mr. Barnier’s successor could amend them in a way that is more acceptable to Parliament.

If Mr. Macron appoints a prime minister before the end of the year, an entirely new budget could be submitted, and Parliament would have 70 days to examine it. But that would leave France without a spending law by the new year.

Instead, under French law, the government could propose a “special measure” reapplying the 2024 budget. Civil servants would be paid and taxes would remain at their current level.

Mr. Macron said on Thursday that he favored that solution and that he would urge the government to do so by mid-December.

If Parliament refuses to go along or does not hold a vote, Mr. Macron could also invoke his extraordinary constitutional powers and simply impose a budget. But jurists agree that the consequences of such an untested move could be severe, especially as the French president is often challenged for failing to respect the voice of voters.

What happens to Macron?

Under the French Constitution, Mr. Macron cannot seek another consecutive term after it expires in 2027. But some politicians on both the left and the right are calling for his resignation, arguing that it is the only way to break the political deadlock. Analysts say that Ms. Le Pen is especially eager for an early presidential election.

“They are thinking about only one thing: the presidential election and how to prepare it, provoke it, precipitate it,” Mr. Macron said of his opponents on Thursday.

But, he said, “The mandate you have democratically entrusted me with lasts five years, and I will serve it fully.”