It was a question famously asked by France’s wartime leader and former President Charles de Gaulle. “How can anyone govern a country with 246 varieties of cheese?” More than 60 years on, the answer appears to be no one.
With yet another government on the brink, France has, it seems, become ungovernable. On Monday, Francois Bayrou, less than a year into his job, looks set to become the fourth prime minister to depart in just 20 months. His fate now rests on a confidence vote in parliament that, if lost, would cement a record under the Fifth Republic and leave the country’s president Emmanuel Macron weaker than ever.
Bayrou called the vote in a bid to push through an unpopular 44 billion euros savings plan that includes scrapping two public holidays and freezing spending. He says it’s a matter of “national survival,” warning that France must get a grip on its spiraling debt, since “for 20 years, each hour of each day and each night has seen the debt grow by 12 million euros extra.”
These may be alarmist words designed to spur the country’s fractious political classes into urgent action, even though budget reform was precisely what claimed the scalp of his predecessor, Michel Barnier. The European Union’s chief negotiator who kept the bloc united in the wake of Britain’s tortured vote to leave the European Union in 2016, lasted only three months as PM, failing to climb that much steeper mountain of getting the French to accept sweeping spending cuts.
With France sliding deeper into political instability, its borrowing costs are climbing. Ten-year bond yields have risen above those of Spain, Portugal and Greece – countries that were once at the heart of the Eurozone debt crisis – and are now edging close to those of Italy. An economy under mounting strain and at odds with the European strongman image that Macron has sought to project.
France’s Prime Minister Francois Bayrou speaks during a press conference in Paris, on August 25. – Dimitar Dilkoff/AFP/Getty Images
And yet the current instability can be traced back to Macron’s dramatic decision to call a snap election last year. Piqued by the remarkable results of the far-right National Rally in the European elections of May 2024, the French president forced a parliamentary vote in which his own party lost seats to the far right and far left, leaving France with a divided Assembly.
But it didn’t have to be this way. The Fifth Republic, founded by President de Gaulle in 1958, was designed to end the chronic instability that had plagued France’s Third and Fourth republics earlier in the 20th century. The new constitution gave broad powers to the executive and set up a majority system to avoid short-lived governments. As a result, for decades, two mainstream parties on the left and right alternated in power.
Macron blew up that order in 2017, by becoming the first president elected without the backing of either of the main established political parties. Re-elected in 2022, he soon lost his parliamentary majority as voters flocked to the extremes. Two years of fragile rule followed, with Macron repeatedly forced to invoke Article 49.3 of the constitution – pushing legislation through without a vote, to the increasing displeasure of opposition lawmakers and much of the French public.
In the 2024 snap election, the left won most seats in the second round but still fell short of a majority after the far right dominated the first. But their hopes of forming a minority government collapsed when Macron refused to accept their choice of prime minister. Unlike Germany or Italy, France has no tradition of coalition-building, its politics shaped for more than 60 years by a presidency-dominated system.
What comes next?
If Bayrou falls, pressure on Macron to resign will intensify though he has vowed to serve out his term. Far-right doyenne Marine Le Pen is demanding he dissolve parliament, but fresh elections would almost certainly strengthen her party and fracture parliament further. Another path would be for Macron to appoint a caretaker government while weighing a successor with Armed Forces Minister Sébastien Lecornu and Justice Minister Gérald Darmanin among the frontrunners for what is likely to be a poisoned chalice.
The trouble is that after three failed centrist prime ministers, the opposition parties are in no mood to give another one a chance. Both the far right and far left have signaled they would immediately call for a vote of no confidence. Another option would be to name a prime minister from another political family, but a choice on the right would be blocked by the left, and vice versa.
The political climate is bleak. In the event of another snap parliamentary election, a recent Elabe poll suggests the National Rally would emerge on top, with the left coming in second and the center a distant third.
French President Charles de Gaulle visits Brittany in 1969. – James Andanson/Getty Images
Many now assume the far right will eventually take power – if not now, then in the next presidential poll in 2027, but with little expectation it would solve the malaise. Public trust in the political class has collapsed and anger is set to spill onto the streets on September 10 with nationwide protests under the banner Bloquons tout (“block everything”).
All of this comes at the worst possible moment, with wars raging in the Ukraine and the Middle East. Instability in Paris is a gift to both Russian President Vladimir Putin and to US counterpart Donald Trump, who share a common delight in mocking Europe’s weaknesses.
Dominique Moïsi, a senior analyst at the Paris-based think tank Institut Montaigne, says he cannot recall a moment of such profound deadlock in the Fifth Republic.
“De Gaulle survived assassination attempts, there was the Algerian war, in May ’68 the slogan was ‘la France s’ennuie,’ (France is bored). But today France is frustrated, furious, full of hatred towards the elite,” he told CNN.
“It sounds as if a regime change is inevitable yet I can’t see how it will come about and who would do the job. We are in a phase of transition between a system that no longer works and a system no one can imagine.”
De Gaulle was the president, who despite his mutterings about cheese, ushered in a period of relative stability in 1958 in France with the start of the Fifth Republic. The question now is whether Macron will be the president who ended it.
For more CNN news and newsletters create an account at CNN.com
