French PM expected to survive latest no-confidence vote

By Makini Brice and Elizabeth Pineau

PARIS (Reuters) -French Prime Minister Francois Bayrou was set to survive on Thursday a vote of no-confidence called by the hard left after the centre-left Socialist Party said it would not back the motion.

The far-right National Rally (RN) party of Marine Le Pen had already signalled it would not support the measure. It means President Emmanuel Macron’s government lives to fight another day without being solely reliant on the far-right’s grace.

Question marks had hung over the Socialists’ position and Bayrou has sought their support to avoid being left reliant on the RN, including by offering to re-negotiate a 2023 pension reform disliked by the left.

“We will not censor you (today),” Socialist Party leader Olivier Faure told Bayrou as the debate started at the National Assembly.

The political instability in France, which had four prime ministers last year, has rattled markets.

If the Socialists had decided to back the no-confidence motion, Bayrou would again have found himself reliant on the tacit support of the RN.

Faure had previously said Bayrou’s pledge to re-open talks on pension reform was not enough, and that his party would back the no-confidence vote in the absence of a clear response to their demands.

To win over the Socialists, Bayrou detailed in a letter a series of further concessions ranging from scrapping a cut in state medical reimbursements, increasing hospital spending more than previously budgeted and dropping plans to axe 4,000 teachers posts.

Bayrou also agreed to keep concessions his predecessor Michel Barnier had already made, including shelving an electricity tax hike and raising all pensions in line inflation at a cost of 3.6 billion euros ($3.7 billion).

Bayrou also committed to push ahead with a series of tax hikes worth 21 billion euros that Barnier had planned, namely on the wealthy and big companies.

The head of France’s lower house of parliament warned earlier on Thursday that there would be big risks if a no-confidence motion against government succeeded because it would hit areas such as the budget.

“Today, we must all come together and get over our differences, to get the country moving forward and to be able to respond to matters of great importance,” parliament head Yael Braun-Pivet told TF1 TV.

Braun-Pivet said that if the no-confidence motion went through, France would be unable to push through legislation on farming and a special law on Mayotte, France’s overseas territory that was battered by a cyclone last month.

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(Reporting by Makini Brice, Sophie Louet and Elizabeth Pineau; Editing by Sudip Kar-Gupta, Timothy Heritage and GV De Clercq)