The vote of no confidence, voted by the French parliament, is a leading topic in the Western press today, writes BTA.
"The French government has fallen. What next?", asks the "New York Times", noting that President Emmanuel Macron is expected to appoint a new prime minister, rejecting calls for new elections or resignation.
Macron's ally François Bayrou won only 194 votes of deputies, 364 declared "against" his government, notes the British newspaper "The Guardian". He is expected to formally resign today.
Macron will now face the challenge of appointing his third prime minister in a year and his fifth since the start of his second term. His office has already announced that the choice will be made "in the coming days".
Bayrou himself requested the vote of confidence as a last-ditch attempt to gain support for austerity measures aimed at reducing the national debt, the British publication recalls. Before the vote, he called for an exit from the "debt swamp" and a compromise on the budget.
The French newspaper "Le Monde" published the opinion of constitutional law expert Denis Baranger that the failed vote of confidence was a logical continuation of "the claim of one man to govern alone, without a majority and a program". According to him, the way out of the crisis must be through the mobilization of the mechanisms of the parliamentary system.
The fall of François Bayrou after the announcement of the common policy yesterday was completely predictable. In a parliamentary system, a government without a majority is a living dead man. François Bayrou simply chose to set the date of the death certificate, which could have been drawn up immediately after his government was formed.
Since this government has so far escaped this fate, it seems that no one expected its failure.
Although an isolated leader of a heterogeneous and minority government, François Bayrou also did not make much effort to reach out to those opposition forces with whom agreements would be possible. How can we not draw a parallel between this and the no less self-destructive dissolution of parliament announced by President Emmanuel Macron in June 2024, asks Baranger.
The failed vote of confidence was the failure of one person - Prime Minister Bayrou - but also the failure of one idea - that of compromise, writes the French newspaper "Libération".
At the moment, this idea is not very popular in the public debate in many of the democratic countries around us. It is not at the center of French political culture. Compromise, on the other hand, is the engine of François Bayrou's centrist identity. He stated it yesterday from the podium: "I believe in compromise."
However, this also leads to the question - why did the Prime Minister not seek more compromises with all his might over the past nine months? Why didn't he ask for them on the issues of pensions, on the taxation of the richest, on the taxation of multinationals?
This is even more incomprehensible, considering that in a parliamentary environment in which he was deprived of a majority, he was obliged to do so. And this environment will not change with the resignation of the government of François Bayrou.
Compromise is not a political goal in itself. It is not an absolute virtue on all issues, in all circumstances, with everyone (and certainly not with Marine Le Pen's "National Assembly", the French publication notes). However, it is at the heart of the budgetary equation that the future prime minister will have to solve.
"France is the new Italy", writes in turn the British newspaper "Telegraph" in an analysis comparing France with Italy, which is known for its frequent changes of government.
Unlike Rome, however, Paris shows no signs of making the reforms that are currently leading Italy to a rise, the British publication notes.