Catherine Field: France Correspondence on the collapse of the French Government, no-confidence vote

The French government has collapsed. 

Prime Minister Michel Barnier has been ousted in a no-confidence vote just three months after he was appointed by President Emmanuel Macron. 

Newstalk ZB's Paris correspondent Catherine Field says the right and the Government are warning the no confidence vote will result in chaos, and plunge France into the "unknown". 

Field says it's the first time since 1962 that a French prime minister has lost a vote of confidence. 

She says Macron last week began asking around to see if anyone wanted the job, and there are four names who are ready to step into the role of Prime Minister. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Right, Catherine morning, Good morning, mate. Does he survive.

Speaker 2 (00:06):
It's looking pretty difficult for the current French Prime Minister,
Michel Bournier. He of course is facing that no confidence motion.
A vote will be sometime within the next hour.

Speaker 3 (00:19):
Currently he's about.

Speaker 2 (00:20):
Fifty votes short, so that's not much time for him
to find those extra fifty votes he needs to be
able to save the day. What we've been hearing, Mike
for the last thirty six hours has been warnings from
the right and from the government that if Parliament brings
down this government that there will be just chaos, We'll
be diving into the unknown.

Speaker 3 (00:42):
And so they've been.

Speaker 2 (00:43):
Using very much this threat that France cannot go down
this road. It will be moving out of a sort
of stablish economy, a stablish government if they do this,
and of course if the government loses us, the prime
minister loses this this vote of it goes against him,
then that will be the first time since nineteen sixty

(01:04):
two that a French prime minister has lost a vote
of confidence.

Speaker 1 (01:08):
Do you think Macron knew this was coming or he
was just so stuck to find somebody in the first
place he thought he'd worry about it another day.

Speaker 2 (01:17):
Well, there were not a lot of people ready to
do this job back in that, you know, in September,
so he was pretty stuck finding someone.

Speaker 3 (01:26):
He's going to be even more stuck now, Mike.

Speaker 2 (01:28):
But there was no love loss between Michel Barnier and
Emanuel Macron.

Speaker 3 (01:32):
In fact, in the last week apparently Emanuel.

Speaker 2 (01:34):
Macron had started asking around if anyone wanted the job.
And just an indication of that is we've already got
four names of people who are ready to step in
as prime minister to try and save the day.

Speaker 1 (01:46):
So that's France. Then you've got Germany, which is a
basket case and their government's collapsed, and then there's an
election coming in VW on strike. I mean, for what
it once was, what a mess.

Speaker 2 (01:57):
What a mess indeed, And there is just no good
economic news coming out at the moment. Just today, Mike
oecd that you're the Paris based think tag.

Speaker 3 (02:07):
Came up with new figures for Europe's economy.

Speaker 2 (02:09):
It's said that the German economy is only going to
grow by about point seven percent next year, so that's
down from the predictions that it was going to be
just over one percent. The French economy expected to grow
just zero point nine percent. That's a cut of point
three percent. So this is well below the European average.
So you have no good news there and really looking

(02:30):
difficult to see how this could change because both countries
have gone a lot of political infighting. They're facing the
same problems as everyone else. Let's look at high energy prices,
weak foreign demand, growing threat of trade protectionism, high inflation,
soaring energy prices.

Speaker 3 (02:48):
When you look.

Speaker 2 (02:49):
Further down the road, might none of the indicators say
it's going to get better in the short term.

Speaker 1 (02:54):
Okay, Hey, what was this Russian ship doing firing on
the military helicopter? What was going on there?

Speaker 3 (03:01):
Very strange this one, Mike.

Speaker 2 (03:02):
It seems to be the allegation is at least that
it was another one of these sort of hybrid attacks
that your parts of native countries are coming under at
the moment. The German foreign minister has said that a
Russian ship, not saying whether there was a military ship,
but a Russian ship fired a signaling weapon of some

(03:24):
sort and a German military helicopter in the Baltic on Wednesday. Now,
of course the German military helicopter was up there because
they're doing a lot more present than surveillance there following
what last month's damage of those two communication cables in
the Baltic. The reason everyone's so worried about this at
the moment, Mike, is just last week we had here

(03:47):
in Paris the head of British intelligence, the head of six,
and the head of the French intelligence agency warning that
at the moment the Russians are being and I'm quoting here,
staggeringly reckless in their sabotage attempts against Western targets. And
the head of MI six actually said at this public
meeting that his agents are working around the clock to

(04:10):
stop these events spiraling out of control.

Speaker 1 (04:12):
Hey, are you looking forward to seeing old Trumpster over
the weekend at Notre Dame.

Speaker 3 (04:17):
He's going to be here on Saturday.

Speaker 2 (04:19):
Yes, I was there today and they are putting up
all sorts of covering so as when those delegates come
out the VIPs get out of their cars and have
to walk up into the cathedral, that they won't.

Speaker 3 (04:33):
Get that wet good stuff.

Speaker 1 (04:34):
You go, well appreciate it, Catherine. Nice to see you.
Written an interesting piece the other day reputn in the war. Basically,
it's destroyed the social fabrica of Russia. I mean it's
not the first time they've been at war, but the
drinking and going on in Russia at the moment is
more and more dead people come back to, you know,
one of the body bags come home. The drinking sans
alcohol deaths throughout thirty percent so far this year.

Speaker 3 (04:55):
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Speaker 2 (04:58):
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