“We regret that we cannot trust you,” Socialist lawmaker Boris Vallaud told Bayrou.
Another left-wing member of the assembly, Mathilde Panot of France Unbowed, sought to intensify pressure on Macron even though he has refused to resign.
Bayrou lost the vote by 364 to 194.Credit: Bloomberg
“The president doesn’t want to change his policy. So we’ll have to change president,” she said.
The French economy has slowed over the past four years and government spending has increased, putting federal debt on track to reach nearly 120 per cent of GDP next year, according to the OECD.
This puts France close to the United States but behind Japan, where debt was 228 per cent of GDP, and Greece at 180 per cent, in the most recent OECD figures. The same table estimated Australian government debt was 55 per cent of GDP.
Despite the turmoil of recent weeks and the slow-motion plans to remove the prime minister, the major French sharemarket index, the CAC 40, rose slightly on Monday. It has fallen about 6 per cent since February.
Bayrou wanted to cut the country’s budget deficit from 5.8 per cent of GDP last year to 4.6 per cent next year, in the hope of steadily reducing the figure to 3 per cent by 2029.
This required a combination of spending cuts and lower growth in welfare payments as well as the highly controversial move to cancel two public holidays to lift productivity.
The removal of the prime minister is another sign that Macron has failed to break the impasse in parliament after his risky move last year to call a parliamentary election in the hope of halting the rise of le Pen and her party.
National Rally and allied parties hold 138 seats in the national assembly, making it the largest bloc, while the Ensemble coalition loyal to Macron has only 91 seats. France Unbowed holds 71 seats and the Socialists hold 66, while the Greens have 38.
With no single party dominating the assembly, Macron appears likely to face similar challenges to his next prime minister.
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