Opinion | The Solution to France’s Woes Is Hiding in Plain Sight

He bet the house and lost.

In calling the confidence vote that brought down his government on Monday, Prime Minister François Bayrou of France has plunged the country into turmoil. He’s now the second prime minister evicted from power since last fall, when President Emmanuel Macron tapped a minority coalition of centrists and conservatives after the inconclusive snap election in the summer of 2024. Unaccustomed to paralysis of this kind, France is once again without a government.

The country can ill afford such uncertainty. Faced with a budget deficit of over 5 percent of gross domestic product, France is in dire need of flexible leadership. A self-proclaimed arbiter of fiscal responsibility, Mr. Bayrou proposed a 2026 budget that would achieve over 40 billion euros ($47 billion) in savings, largely at the expense of the working and middle classes. He called the confidence vote in order to strong-arm Parliament into accepting it. The opposition parties, from the left and the far right, voted to unseat him instead.

This showdown was entirely avoidable. In fact, a solution to France’s fiscal and political stalemate has been hiding in plain sight: a tax on the ultrawealthy. Far from a pie in the sky, a proposal along those lines was approved by the lower house of Parliament this year. But the government and its allies, betraying their rigid approach to economic policy, scuttled it. The cost of that decision is the chaos to come.

Mr. Bayrou’s defeat was pretty much a foregone conclusion. In the absence of an agreement on his terms, he seemingly hopes to win the blame game that’s rapidly becoming the main arena of France’s fractious politics. The departing prime minister — like Mr. Macron, for that matter, who reportedly signed off on the gambit — clearly wants to pin responsibility for the impasse on the opposition’s refusal to swallow the government’s austerity plan.

In the government’s telling, France’s budget woes are the result of profligate welfare obligations, aggravated by expensive emergency spending during the pandemic and the cost-of-living crisis. Mr. Bayrou’s remedy included a bitter cocktail of welfare freezes, the nonreplacement of some retiring civil servants and the scrapping of two public holidays. Its end goal was to return the country to below the European Union’s required 3 percent deficit-to-G.D.P. maximum by 2029.

The French were not convinced. Polls show that a clear majority of the public wanted Parliament to vote for Mr. Bayrou’s ouster. Frustration could soon boil over. On Wednesday a national protest movement to block everything, which gained traction this summer as Mr. Bayrou prepared his budget, is set to begin. It promises to heat up an already combustible situation.

The saga of Mr. Bayrou’s fall is a salutary reminder that budgeting is not a bloodless exercise in accounting but a battle over social priorities. He has long complained that France is “addicted to public spending.” That’s one way to explain the country’s fiscal problems. Yet he and his allies have consistently refused to identify another: the tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy enacted under Mr. Macron’s presidency since 2017. By one reckoning, the revenue shortfall caused in 2023 alone was €62 billion.

The National Assembly hasn’t been so myopic. In February it approved a proposal to establish a 2 percent annual tax targeting the country’s largest fortunes. The so-called Zucman tax, named for Gabriel Zucman, the French economist at Berkeley who thought it up, would have applied to fortunes worth over €100 million. That’s a minuscule segment of society — a mere 1,800 households — but its fiscal impact would be considerable, estimated to bring in €15 billion to €25 billion in annual revenue.

The Zucman tax made it as far as it did thanks to the political math in France’s divided lower house. Crucially, the Marine Le Pen-led far right abstained, no doubt wary of blocking a popular measure destined for defeat. This allowed the New Popular Front, an alliance of left-wing parties, to momentarily take charge. The Senate proved less welcoming, though. In June the parties in the governing coalition, which have a clear majority in the upper house, stopped the tax in its tracks.

That defeat seemed to consign the idea to the dustbin of history. Mr. Bayrou pressed ahead with his program of cuts, including a minor solidarity contribution on high earners that is expected to bring in just €1.2 billion. In the run-up to this week’s vote, he warned that a more comprehensive tax would lead to debilitating capital flight. He was probably taking his cue from Mr. Macron, whose priority since the snap election has been to fight off any substantive retreat from his pro-business agenda.

The public is not likely to let go of the issue. Mainstream figures, including the lead economic adviser during Mr. Macron’s 2017 presidential campaign and a former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund, have joined in support of Mr. Zucman’s plan. What’s more, a majority of French people — 78 percent, according to a poll last fall — are in favor of targeted taxes on the ultrawealthy. Had the government listened, it would have been both savvy politics, shoring up support in Parliament and the country, and smart economics.

Instead, France is staring down the barrel. Mr. Macron is expected to try to scrape together a new government and has urged the parties of the governing coalition to work with the center-left Socialist Party. Yet without major concessions — the Socialists have also put forward a wealth tax in their hypothetical counterbudget — the president’s allies will have to appease Ms. Le Pen into allowing them to form a new administration. If not, another snap legislative election is an option. There are even growing calls for Mr. Macron to resign.

“Everyone will need to participate in the effort,” Mr. Bayrou said when he introduced his ill-fated austerity plan this summer. There’s one group he clearly did not have in mind: the very richest in French society. For their sake, the country’s political stability has been sacrificed.

Harrison Stetler is a Paris-based teacher and journalist who writes about French and European politics.

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