Macron has had 3 prime ministers this year. How long with this one last?
Background
The crisis revolves around Eurozone fiscal rules. The EU never enforced its Growth and Stability Pact or Maastricht Treaty rules. But now it wants to.
French President Emmanuel Macron is struggling to find a Prime Minister who can lead a three-way fractured political environment in which no group has a majority.
In France, the prime minister is appointed by the president and is responsible for leading domestic legislation including the budget.
On September 8, I noted French Government Collapses in No-Confidence Vote, What’s Next?
Bye Bye Bayrou [Macron’s last Prime Minister]. An amusing “Let’s block everything movement” takes hold.
On September 9, Macron appointed Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu as his third prime minister in a year.
It’s not going well.
Strikes Roil France
The AP reports Strikes and protests roil France, pitting the streets against Macron and his new prime minister
The day of upheaval for the European Union’s second-largest economy aimed to turn up the heat on new Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu and his boss, Macron. They’re engaged in an intensifying battle both in parliament and on the streets about how to plug holes in France’s finances, with opponents fighting proposals to cut spending on public services that underpin the French way of life.
Protesters’ anger at budget cuts
Macron’s opponents complain that taxpayer-funded public services — free schools and public hospitals, subsidized health care, unemployment benefits and other safety nets that are cherished in France — are being eroded by his governments that have lurched from crisis to crisis since he dissolved parliament in 2024, triggering a legislative election that stacked Parliament’s lower house with critics of the president.
Placards at the Paris demonstration read: “Tax the rich.”
“We need to find money where there’s money,” said Pierre Courois, a 65-year-old retired civil servant. “France’s deficit is an issue, but it’s not by cutting on public services that you fix it.”
“Our pay is stuck, colleagues are leaving, and wards are closing beds,” said 34-year-old public hospital nurse Stephane Lambert. “For us it’s the same story: less money in our pockets, fewer hands to help, more pressure every day.”
Lecornu’s baptism of fire
As he seeks support for belt-tightening, Lecornu has trimmed lifetime benefits for former government ministers — a largely symbolic first step that won’t generate huge savings — and scrapped wildly unpopular proposals to eliminate two public holidays, a measure intended to spur revenue. He has been meeting opposition leaders and labor unions to try to build consensus for a budget, but his close relationship with Macron puts him in the firing line, too.
“Bringing in Lecornu doesn’t change anything — he’s just another man in a suit who will follow Macron’s line,” said 22-year-old student Juliette Martin.
On his first day in office last week, anti-government protests saw streets choked with smoke, barricades in flames and volleys of tear gas as demonstrators denounced budget cuts and political turmoil. That “Block Everything” campaign became a prelude for Thursday’s even larger demonstrations.
Scattered violence
The first whiffs of police tear gas came before daybreak, with scuffles between riot officers and protesters in Paris. The collapse of successive governments — brought down by votes in parliament — that sought to push through savings has given Macron’s critics a sense of momentum. The “Block Everything” campaign that developed online before taking to the streets also added to the climate of crisis.
As it did last week, the government said it was again deploying police in exceptionally large numbers — about 80,000 in all — to keep order on Thursday. Police were ordered to break up blockades and other efforts to prevent people who weren’t protesting from going about their business.
The Interior Ministry reported 181 arrests nationwide as the afternoon ended and more than 450,000 demonstrators outside Paris, with protests in big cities and small towns. Paris police said that another 55,000 people marched in the capital. Participation estimates from the CGT, among unions that called the strikes and demonstrations, were double those of police, reporting more than 1 million strikers and protesters nationwide.
French Unions Pressure Macron
Reuters reports French unions strike against austerity, pressuring Macron
Hundreds of thousands took part in anti-austerity protests across France on Thursday, urging President Emmanuel Macron and his new Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu to acknowledge their anger and scrap looming budget cuts.
Teachers, train drivers, pharmacists and hospital staff were among those who went on strike as part of the day of protests, while teenagers blocked dozens of high schools for hours.“The anger is immense, and so is the determination. My message to Mr. Lecornu today is this: it’s the streets that must decide the budget,” said Sophie Binet, head of the CGT union.
Lecornu and Macron are under pressure on one side from protesters and left-wing parties opposed to budget cuts and, on the other, from investors concerned about the deficit in the euro zone’s second-largest economy. Parliament is deeply divided and none of its three main groups has a majority.
Budget Compliance Rules
- Deficit rule: a country is compliant if (i) the budget balance of general government is equal or larger than -3% of GDP or, (ii) in case the -3% of GDP threshold is breached, the deviation remains small (max 0.5% of GDP) and limited to one year.
- Debt rule: a country is compliant if the general government debt-to-GDP ratio is below 60% of GDP or if the excess above 60% of GDP has been declining by 1/20 on average over the past three years.
France’s general government gross debt is projected to reach approximately 116.0% of its GDP in 2025.
France Budget Deficit and Debt-to-GDP 2024
France and Italy Noncompliance
- France Debt-to-GDP: 113% vs target 60%
- France Budget Deficit: 5.8% vs target 3%
- Italy Debt-to-GDP: 135.3% vs target 60%
- Italy Budget Deficit: 3.4% vs target 3%
France is Ungovernable
There is no chance of any political party addressing the debt and deficit rules.
So, why would anyone want to govern?
The only answer is arrogance, but arrogance will not fix any problems.
Related Posts
March 27, 2024: Expect a Financial Crisis in Europe With France at the Epicenter
What’s the Basic Problem?
Eurointelligence says “Technology is the main cause of the decline. Geopolitics is what accelerated it.”
Technology is not the problem. The Maastricht treaty that created the Eurozone is flawed. And it cannot be fixed without unanimous agreement
The EU Is Dysfunctional
In a single word, the EU is dysfunctional. That’s the problem, not technology. The Maastricht treaty itself is a big part of the reason the EU is dysfunctional. The Euro itself, with one common interest rate, is fundamentally flawed.
June 21, 2024: Debt Brakes and Treaty Requirements About to Smash the EU.
The EU has launched an Excessive Debt Proceeding against France. It won’t stop there.
Hoot of the Day
To achieve a government debt-to-GDP ratio of 60 percent, EU countries will have to reduce spending or raise taxes by 2 percent of GDP, on average, every year for 46 years.
Let’s just say it’s not going to happen. But these clowns are likely to try, if for no other reason than punish Le Pen.
Nothing has been solved because nothing can be solved. It’s politically impossible.
The French government is about to collapse again with France nowhere close to meeting debt brake and fiscal compliance rules.
If any party gets a majority in the next election, it will regret winning. No one is willing or able to address the mandatory rules.
January 10, 2025: The Political Crisis in France Is About to Get Much Worse
The entire eurozone is in shambles, and Trump’s demands will accelerate the crisis. One seriously must wonder if that is his real goal.
Well, that was certainly accurate.
August 27, 2025: French Government on Verge of Collapse Over Debt Crisis, What’s Next?
A vote of confidence is scheduled. Expect the government to fall.
By August 27, 2025, everyone was making that call. No credit to latecomers.
The EU Has a Big Problem With Military Spending and Trump’s Definition
In case you missed it, please see my September 4, 2025 post The EU Has a Big Problem With Military Spending and Trump’s Definition
France currently spends 2.1 percent of GDP on defense. Italy spends 1.5 percent.
Trump demands 3.5 percent. See above link for details.
Currency Crisis Awaits
Nothing has been solved because nothing can be solved. It’s politically impossible.
I keep repeating the idea “a currency crisis awaits”.
However, things are so screwed up globally that a crisis can start anywhere. The EU, US, China, and Japan are all possibilities.
There is no fiscal sanity anywhere.
Saw a small protest in Nice France today while touring around, but again it was more of a party than anything else.
Interestingly I struck up a conversation with three women from Australia today and they asked about tourism in the states? I replied that I did not know because we only had local tourism where I lived ~ but had heard that overall it was down some 20% because of Trumps follies. They stated the they were in Monaco instead of their original booking in New York. Serious dislike for trump and his policies ranging from trade and womens issues to border controls…
Elections have consequences.
They thought importing cheap labor from Arab countries would save them. Oops.
French doesn’t want to pay more tax.
French doesn’t want to give up big beautiful benefit.
France Debt-to-GDP: 113% vs target 60%
France Budget Deficit: 5.8% vs target 3%
My suggestion:
Tell your people – you’re not going to tax you but tariff the foreign sellers.
How easy!
Your people will believe you if they are – – –
“There is no chance of any political party addressing the debt and deficit rules.”
Everyone is in the same boat, approaching the grand debt cycle reset.
“Currency Crisis Awaits”
As Mises said, the end result of a debt fueled boom is that the debt collapses or the currency does.
“There is no fiscal sanity anywhere.”
Governments all have the same fear of civil unrest from actually dealing with the fiscal debt problem.
Not at all. They are printing and distributing money to themselves and their collaborators.
What do they have to fear from you?
Got F-35s and main battle tanks?
They do.
A rifle, a good vantage point, and some patience.
They’re only doing that to people potentially harmful to the system. Others miraculously escape said fate…
Here is America? BIRDS CHIRPING in protest. NO ONE is hitting the streets! It is WORSE HERE because you can go Medically Bankrupt, or Bankrupt in a half of a dozen ways.
America keeps the lid on with HIDDEN benefits to anyone who has he savvy to fill out a Government Form for freebies.
Then: people BORROW (supported easily with freebie money, never to be repaid) to buy cars that they could never afford normally with cash.
KIDS are home now, at 30 – – unmarried, and uncoupled, and smoking cheap Weed and barely working. I have two Bro’s who are in their 60’s and BOTH have dead-head sons living in basements. ONE of the two boys works for Dad and the other is a painter who works under the table for a local self-employed man who paints houses.
I was in Marsaillie France yesterday for the protests and saw first hand that it was basically a big party!
Lot’s of people parading around following trucks or vans with speakers blasting music. A few fireworks popping off, zero violence or serious conflict. The trains were shut down for the day and most busses did not run their routes. After the party/protests, everyone adjourned to the cafe’s along the bay.
Let’s just say that there is no real worry about this on the streets of France and if something broke in the system, people would just say “Ok, it’s the fifth revolution” and move on with their lives.
There are many nuclear power plants around the countryside and traffic flows well with tons of EV’s, Electric Bikes, pushbikes and Scooters.
Public transport is mostly EV busses and only in the small country towns do you run into belchfire the smoky diesel.
Fantastically healthy people with only the rare American fatty tourist waddling around. Goodness; I knew America was fat, but now that I’m in the south of France it is a treat to see healthy people again.
Only the union workers seem to give a shit about wages and benefits. Everyone else seems way happier than most Fox News watching, blubbery, Americans that are up against the wall financially.
Trump is viewed as a comedian rich boy that is a soulless money grubbing pervert: aka (Typical Politician).
Bonjour!
My wife and I love France. I understand tourism is down in Europe, we didn’t go this year. I’m American but we are a gross species, the young guy down the street just finished a triple bypass. He swears by the carnivore diet. Enjoy your trip and say hello to Montpellier.
In the big picture, you can’t have a society where so many people are living off the government. The high taxes and inflation eventually weaken the economy. We could face a similar crisis here, but maybe France has even more government dependents than we do.
If the EU budget rules are the problem; then maybe FREXIT is the solution.
Qatar and Turkey destabilized France for decades. Tony Blair will rule Jasa instead of Qatar. Jordan lost the west bank and east Jerusalem in the Six Days war. Macron, the weak link, rewards Turkey and Qatar Islamic forces, but instead he actually rewards Bibi, whom he hate the most. He knows that it’s a mistake, but can’t cut his losses. Ursula, fearing Muslim Bros chaos and civil war, will try to muzzle Macron and his gang, before the clash between Bibi and Macron is out of control. French Jews are trained to protect themselves from Muslim mobs.
The French police only protect jews in France. Even the muslim terrorists who beat up to a pulp FRENCH POLICE OFFICERS were let go by the French Justice System within hours I believe. Facing protests, they re-arraigned them, I’m not sure.
If you complain about violent muslims in Europe, the police arrest YOU.
There is no fiscal sanity anywhere.
—
That is because money can be created out of electrons.
And because we’ve put spendthrift simian’s in charge of that electronic printing press everywhere.
From what I have read most of the protesters are French government workers and are protesting against government spending cuts. This is not the French yellow vest protesters who were protesting against high taxes.
France’s debt measures are worse than typically calculated: those should include its share of the EUR 800 billion the EU Commission intends to spend over the next four years to enhance Europe’s defence capabilities.
The hate of Trump is smaller in comparison to the hate of Starmer and Macron. The former colonialists, who ruled the whole world for hundred years, are infected by reverse colonialism since the 50’s. They are angry and depresses, but they don’t know why. They intend to destroy what is left. In the US $17T are pouring in to rejuvenate our economy for the next 50 years. High tech and AI are not good enough. We have to rebuild basic industries to assure our survival.
Please detail the $17 trillion.
In my entire life (and since I were living in Europe), I can’t remember a time when France did not have strikes, protests, and unsustainable finances. Even before the Euro. What changed during the Euro, due to the strict fiscal rules and Soviet style mismanagement of resources, was that it reached a point young people could hardly afford meat about 10 years ago (and France used to be the No.1 or 2 in per capita consumption of meat). Childhood friend of mine (Sorbonne PhD) told me a few years ago “it’s hard enough to find a job if you don’t have a French surname, now we can’t afford groceries“. She went back to Greece where she has a large family.
“So, why would anyone want to govern?
“The only answer is arrogance, but arrogance will not fix any problems.”
No sir, not at all.
The small hats tribe wants to control and use us as they see fit. It’s not about mere arrogance. It’s about collective economic and cultural rape for their pleasure and their benefit. The French get raped by a 25% enemy muslim population.
We get raped by the banks and the military industrial complex where our money goes to ISRAEL whereas we get awful/nonexistent healthcare and crumbling roads, bridges and a society that has devolved into subhuman life forms, thanks to liberal jewish public education.
Check out Barbara Lerner Spectre (a jewish Soros ally) and what she says jews like her are going to do to Europe, and eventually to America as well.
Notes from the ground: we spent the last week in Paris. Intra-muros as the French say here, nothing happening inside Paris. Only some of our hôtel employees who lived in Versailles had to wait a bit longer and take an extra metro ride to get to the C line of the RER trains serving the suburbs. The global 10-percenters are doing just fine, thank you. Can’t find a table at the better restaurants which are packed. The cheaper (but really low quality) touristy places are only quarter full.
Rich getting richer, poor getting poorer.
End game?
War
“Notes from the underground”: Bibi snubbed Macron. He refused to meet him in the UN. Macron is the leader of the pack which preach morality to Israel. They try to please the angry European Muslim mob with anti Israeli foreign policy and with embargo. In Oct u will be less arrogant and rich. The bible u read was written in Hebrew.
The talmud you read is written in hebrew and states that our Jesus Christ is boiling in excrement and semen in hell. It also says non-jews are animals in human form that can be abused and killed with impunity by jews. Not even Noam Chomsky says a word about this. (I’ll spare you the fifteen pages of the talmud where you guys discuss how a three-year-old girl can be raped without any problems.)
It’s the Israel lobby and NGOs that transferred those hate-filled muslims to Europe.
Barbara Lerner Spectre, Soros, their collaborators in all Western governments, etc.
Lerner, Soros and Noam Chomsky are all yours. We vomited them.
Many liberal Jews are self hating Jews. They and Satmar Jews hate Israel more than u do.
France’s public finances are simply on an unsustainable path; that’s much worse than being in violation of the EU’s fiscal rules (lots of EU countries are violating the rules at this point). Since there seems to be no political solution, a fiscal crisis will have to be the way to restore fiscal sanity (and EU countries have plenty of experience on that subject). But note that the outlook for US public finances is even worse than for France. The only difference with France is that the US can inflate away its sky-high debt.
What nonsense.
The EU central bank is even more capable of inflating the money supply as they do not even have to answer to any of the European member states. The EU parliament is a joke with absolutely no decision making power. The EU commission (the real boss) is comprised of the most corrupt and compromised politicians in the western world.
Ursula Von Der Leyen still shakes hands with the muslim terrorist Azeri president Aliyev (who just committed another genocide on the Christian Armenians) and buys Russian gas from them.
There is no “EU central bank”.
https://www.ecb.europa.eu/home/html/index.en.html
Wrong. $17T are pouring in to rebuild our industries. While the economy is swing from the gov side to the private sector we will have to duck. In France, shrinking the gov size and shifting to the private sector can’t be done. The mob is rising on the gov to de-cap it. In China the powerful bureaucrats might gang together and de-cap Shi.
Can you please detail the $17 trillion?
The black swan in France might spread in the EU, UK and the US.
Yes, the black plague of the antisemite genocidal Israel
Naaaa, Israel will build one state, from the Jordan valley to the sea, for Jews, Arabs and for old Christians like u, thank to Macron and his gang.
The impostors who violate the teachings of the Torah? But then again, who’s the master of this world down below…
The bible is 5000 years old. Your knock off is 2000 years old.
Don’t forget: Yeshu was Israel. I was born a few miles from where he was born.
The Bible is considerably younger than 2000 years old. What you are disingenuously referring to is the Torah of which the Old Testament derives much of its content.
Possibly a majority of rational Christians do not have a very good opinion of the genocidal and racist God of the Old Testament.
And what to say of zionist christians…
Within two weeks Chuck and Hakeem will shut the US gov down.
Good! I hope it stays shut down for the next decade like a strip mall that can’t find a new tenant for the old chuckie cheese.
These stories provide no new information. France is headed towards some sort of crack-up. If they get “lucky”, some other nation will crack up first. So I wait, and do other things, until that crack-up occurs. And I wonder in what way these French demonstrators demanding government spending will get confronted in the face that the government does not have any money to provide those public benefits, that it is bankrupt.
– And then what happens?
They came back from two months paid vacation and decided that the streets will cut the budget deficit.
Frankly if I were France the first place I’d be looking for budget cuts is precisely the military Trump is crowing about. What exactly does France need a massive military for? Fighting another German invasion? Teleporting Russians?
This fiscal/currency crisis is brewing because the entire world has been pretending like the USSR didn’t stop existing in ’91. Russia’s military is a joke that Poland alone could steamroll over with what they have now. Despite this, everyone (especially the US) has been pouring money into a war that would’ve happened back during Able Archer if it was ever going to happen.
After 30+ years of this routine, it’s now incredibly apparent that the economic numbers do not match the economic reality. In the US, going to the hospital is a luxury for most of the population. France doesn’t want to see themselves go there, so it’s not hard to see the anger. The only problem is: someone has to pay for this, and the money printer isn’t working anymore.
Correction: the money printer always and only works for the 1 percent. How do you think the stock market goes up? Who in his right mind would buy Palantir with a P/E above 500? An Nvidia that has been vendor financing Coreweave (and now Intel), commiting accounting fraud and illegally selling chips to China via Singapore? Carvana with a P/E of a hundred when car loan delinquencies are soaring amidst insider selling and more accounting fraud?
The printer hasn’t stopped since 2023. For the 1 percent.
France has no printer. They can’t print their money. Not sovereign state. France has to borrow of which they can’t pay back. US can pay back with under valued printed money. France has no money, I repeat – no money to pay back.
France Debt-to-GDP: 113% vs target 60%France Budget Deficit: 5.8% vs target 3%Italy Debt-to-GDP: 135.3% vs target 60%Italy Budget Deficit: 3.4% vs target 3%It’s worth mentioning that even those target numbers are completely made up by a committee. Like a 2% inflation is price stability, have nothing to do with fiscal prudence.
Could Next Summer bring France their only hope, IMO and their only viable party to have a true chance at success. She has the Strength, Skillset, Support, Experience and More!
Don’t look now, but Governor Fatso just made Zerohedge.
People still read Zeroshill?