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(Bloomberg) — President Emmanuel Macron’s new government sparked an immediate angry reaction from across the political spectrum, raising the risk of a swift collapse that would further cloud the outlook for France’s stretched public finances. 

Prime Minister Michel Barnier’s cabinet, named late Saturday, marks a rightward shift that creates an awkward patchwork of conservatives and centrists who haven’t always worked smoothly together. The two groups fall far short of being able to thwart a no-confidence vote that would bring down the government.

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The left-wing New Popular Front alliance – which holds the largest number of seats in the lower house but was left out of Barnier’s cabinet – has pledged to topple the government at the earliest opportunity. It doesn’t have the votes to do so without the support of the far-right National Rally, whose leader, Marine Le Pen, becomes the de facto king-maker for the new administration.

The National Rally, which is the single largest party in parliament, indicated that the new government has “no future” and is a return of “Macronism.”

“The French, who have twice shown in the last elections their desire to break with seven years of Macronism’s abandonments and failures, find themselves this evening with a reshuffled government, far removed from the desire for change,” Le Pen wrote on X late Saturday. 

The cabinet is the fruit of more than two months of factious negotiations after Macron’s bid to bring stability to parliament with snap elections achieved the opposite: a National Assembly split into three bitterly opposed blocs, each incapable of governing alone. 

Macron’s decision to dissolve the lower house and the ensuing gridlock have undermined investor confidence, driving up France’s borrowing costs compared with other European countries as investors fret about the disarray’s impact on public finances. Making matters worse, the nation’s fiscal situation deteriorated further over the summer under the watch of a caretaker government.

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The priority for Barnier’s administration is to construct a 2025 budget bill in the coming weeks to tackle the runaway deficit. However, it’s already likely to miss the Oct. 1 deadline to present a bill to parliament. Compounding the pressure, the European Union has put France in a special procedure designed to enforce stricter fiscal discipline in countries deemed to have excessive debts and deficits.

Without new measures to curb spending or increase tax, France’s budget deficit could reach 6% of economic output this year, Les Echos reported on Friday, citing new forecasts from the finance ministry. European Union rules cap it at 3%.

The situation made the appointment of a finance minister a central piece of the political puzzle for Barnier and Macron. However, high-profile politicians, including Laurent Wauquiez, the leader of Barnier’s Republicans party in the National Assembly, turned down the job, according to French media. 

The prime minister eventually picked Antoine Armand, a 33-year-old with limited political experience. He’ll be flanked by Budget Minister Laurent Saint-Martin, the 39-year-old head of Business France, which promotes export growth and foreign investment.

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The new finance team must navigate a near intractable division over fiscal policy, even within the parties in the new government. Crucially, Macron’s centrists have vowed to stick to his dogma of not raising taxes, which they argue is the cornerstone of pro-business policies that have attracted investment to France in recent years. Barnier, however, has said he favors more tax fairness.

“In the current fiscal context, excluding outright some exceptional and targeted taxes would not be responsible,” Armand said in an interview with Le Journal du Dimanche. “But that doesn’t make it a doctrine, and doesn’t resolve our problem: we must cut public spending and make it more efficient.” 

Speaking Sunday on France Info radio, National Rally Vice-President Sebastien Chenu said his party’s decision to support a no-confidence bill would depend on the budget and Barnier’s approach. 

“We said we wouldn’t immediately censure the Barnier government,” he said. “On the other hand, seeing the profile of this government, Barnier hasn’t scored a good point.” 

Barnier is due to address the parliament on Oct. 1, which will be the first opportunity for a party to call for a no-confidence vote.

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Macron Supporter

Armand supported Macron’s 2017 election campaign and went on to run a local branch of the president’s party in the Haute-Savoie region bordering Switzerland, before winning a seat in the 2022 legislative elections.

Like Macron, Armand is a graduate of the prestigious Ecole Nationale d’Administration. He began his career at the finance ministry, working on industry, the management of the Covid crisis, and the energy transition. 

Armand regained his seat in parliament in this summer’s snap elections, and in July was elected to chair of the National Assembly’s economy commission, a post he will leave after being appointed minister.

On his website, Armand says he rejects politics focused on party labels at the expense of getting results. “I’ve alway been passionate about politics — in the noble meaning of the word,” he wrote. 

Saint-Martin will report directly to Barnier, a sign of the importance the new prime minister attaches to pushing through a budget.

Barnier scored one high profile appointment with the leader of the Republicans in the Senate, Bruno Retailleau, who’ll be the new interior minister. The 63-year-old has been a vocal critic of Macron’s past governments, demanding more fiscal discipline and taking a more conservative stance on social issues, including voting against inscribing the freedom of abortion in the French constitution.

Overall, there was a shift to the right in the cabinet: out of 39 members, 10 came from Barnier’s group, despite it holding fewer than 50 of 577 seats in the National Assembly, and 12 from Macron’s.

Former Socialist President Francois Hollande, who returned to parliament as a lawmaker in July, repeated that his party would consider a no-confidence bill. 

“The Barnier government is a fragile government,” he told France Bleu radio. “It’s the fruit of an arrangement, a team that already seems wobbly.”

—With assistance from James Regan.

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