Catherine Field: France Correspondent on the shaky standing of the Government and its likely collapse

France’s Government seems to be on the brink of collapse. 

It looks likely to fall apart later this week after far-right and left-wing parties said they will vote for a no-confidence motion against Prime Minister Michel Barnier.  

The move comes after Barnier pushed through the 2025 social security budget without a vote.  

France Correspondent Catherine Field told Mike Hosking that even if Barnier wins this vote, it’s only part of the battle, as he will still need to get the rest of the budget through. 

She says that if he loses, the Government falls, and the best-case scenario is financial and political uncertainty – which could impact the entire Eurozone. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Right to France. We go casine morning, good morning, mate.
In a moment of high drama, you come in at
exactly the right moment. Barnie is doing what he's calling
people's bluff or or not.

Speaker 2 (00:12):
Well rolling the diece, I would say, and it's a
pretty loaded dice. Yeah. Of course. The French Prime Minister,
who has been in office what two and a half months,
put forward the social security budget Bill into Parliament today
after spending the whole weekend going to and fro with
Marine Leapenn, the leader of the largest block in the Parliament,

(00:32):
at the far right National rally. They had, honestly, Mike,
they'd spent the weekend kind of like kids, you know,
just one last thing, just one last thing, one last time.
She almost got everything she wanted and then in the
end the Prime Minister said no, there could be no
more giving way, no more presence from this budget. The
French economy is really in a bad way. This part

(00:54):
of the budget had to go through. He knew he
wasn't going to get it through Parliament, so pushed it
through with that vote, which you know is taking the
Constitution to the limit he can do. But if you
do that in France. The constitution then allows parliament to
have a no confidence vote, and the far left and
the far right, which make up the bulk of parliament,

(01:16):
they have now put forward that no confidence and that
motion will be heard on Wednesday. It's a hostile parliament, Mike.
They want to see his back. As he left the chamber,
they were calling out.

Speaker 1 (01:30):
Oh oh, does he win it or not? And if
he doesn't, literally, what happens.

Speaker 2 (01:40):
Well, if he wins it, he just moves on to
the next fight, which will be later that day. This
is only part of the budget. He still needs to
get the rest of the budget through. He still needs
to save what's at about one hundred and seven billion
New Zealand dollars off next year's budget, so he will
just if he wins this one, he just goes on
to the next battle the next day. Well, so you

(02:03):
know what happens if he loses, well, the government falls.
We then have a caretaker government and then the president's
manual Macron tries to find a new government. What will
happen though, let's say this case scenario would be financial
and political uncertainty. The bond markets are already walking away
from French debt the cost of French debt is just

(02:26):
so high at the moment, so it would just be
a real problem not just for France financially, but also
for the Eurozone, because don't forget, France is one of
twenty countries that shares the Euro And as they say, Mike,
you know, when the bond market walks, then you've really
got a problem.

Speaker 1 (02:43):
And this was the thing we were talking this time
seven days ago, Cas, when we were suggesting the word
Greece was going to be in play, and then all
of a sudden, you're borrowing costs are at Greekly you
look like Greece. Is France embarrassed by this?

Speaker 2 (02:56):
I don't think you know, Joe blogs in the streets embarrassed,
But certainly for some bizarre reason last week, my end
of last week standed in poor debt rating on France
didn't go down, it didn't get a negative rating. So
clearly there are some people around there who think that
this is the eurozone second largest economy. It can come

(03:17):
right difficult to see you in just some of these
figures we're looking at, Mike, manufacturing sector had the roughest
November since twenty twenty. Your weak demand, weak international demand.
It's all all the lights are flashing red. But for
some reason the Parliament is hostile and they say that. Essentially,

(03:38):
at the end of the day, Mike, what they were
saying is tax the rich, leave the less well off alone.
Because what they're arguing about, Mike, with things like what
you have to pay for prescriptions, what people had to
pay for the doctor. And the far left the far
right just turned around and said tax the rich. Well,
Macron's party says, no, don't tax the rich, don't put

(03:58):
taxes up.

Speaker 1 (03:59):
Thanks you, hey, listen, let's in on a bright note.
I was watching a little bit of macrons tour the
other day of Notre Dame. This thing this weekend. Gosh,
it looks beautiful, doesn't it.

Speaker 2 (04:08):
Isn't it stunning? And didn't they keep it a secret?
Making journalists are usually dreadful gossips, since some of those
who'd been in there and done the photos earlier said
nothing about what we were going to see. When he
went in there, it was gobsmacking. And we were also
told it was having going to be a few chapels
that were open, but it's going to be the whole
of the inside. It is going to be wonderful, apart

(04:29):
from the weather, it's going to rain, So questions of
being asked as did Macron know that when he went
in there it was going to be gorgeous skies. They
got the pictures, but this weekend's going to be really dreadful.

Speaker 1 (04:40):
I reckon talk to you so Catherine Field in France,
and we haven't seen the pictures. He did a tour
and it really is just an astonishingly beautiful place and
a bunch of ceremonies coming up this weekend. Five years
on five years is how long it took them to
rebuild the whole place.

Speaker 2 (04:56):
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