No-Confidence Vote Topples French Government: What Comes Next?

This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.

The immediate consequence of the fall of the government, led by Michel Barnier, will be, an early effort by President Macron to name a successor, possibly as early as this evening, Thursday, December 5th, in order to get the political chaos sorted out before this weekend, when he will unveil the renovated Notre Dame Cathedral in front of 50 or 60 government leaders from around the world, including president-elect Trump, who has been invited. 

Today he had lunch with a centrist politician who was very much, not from his party, but, an ally named Francois Bayrou who has previous ministerial experience. He's been, around for 30 or 40 years, sort of an elder statesman, centrist politician who has good ties with both the right and the left. So the hope is that he could find a way to stitch together a majority, in support of a new budget. 

For Macron, he also needs the government to pass a budget before the end of this year so that the funding and of government programs and the paying of civil servants can continue without interruption into the new year. So, time is very much of the essence here, unlike this summer, when he took more than two months to appoint Barnier as prime minister. 

This crisis comes at a very difficult time for Europe because, the other major power in Europe, Germany, is also going through something of a political crisis. The three party coalition led by Olaf Schultz, the Socialist prime minister, has collapsed, and there will be new elections in Germany and in February. So with weakness in France and Germany, which together have served as sort of the tandem couple that that drives the European Union. Europe is sort of stagnating, in the absence of any resolution of the political problems in both France and Germany.