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France Has a New Government, Again. Politics and Crushing Debt Complicate Next Steps

France's Prime Minister Francois Bayrou makes an address after observing a minute of silence as part of an official day of mourning for the victims of Cyclone Chido which hit the archipelago on the French Indian Ocean territory of Mayotte a week ago, at The Hotel Matignon in Paris on December 23, 2024. (AFP)
France's Prime Minister Francois Bayrou makes an address after observing a minute of silence as part of an official day of mourning for the victims of Cyclone Chido which hit the archipelago on the French Indian Ocean territory of Mayotte a week ago, at The Hotel Matignon in Paris on December 23, 2024. (AFP)
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France Has a New Government, Again. Politics and Crushing Debt Complicate Next Steps

France's Prime Minister Francois Bayrou makes an address after observing a minute of silence as part of an official day of mourning for the victims of Cyclone Chido which hit the archipelago on the French Indian Ocean territory of Mayotte a week ago, at The Hotel Matignon in Paris on December 23, 2024. (AFP)
France's Prime Minister Francois Bayrou makes an address after observing a minute of silence as part of an official day of mourning for the victims of Cyclone Chido which hit the archipelago on the French Indian Ocean territory of Mayotte a week ago, at The Hotel Matignon in Paris on December 23, 2024. (AFP)

France’s president and prime minister managed to form a new government just in time for the holidays. Now comes the hard part.

Crushing debt, intensifying pressure from the nationalist far right, wars in Europe and the Middle East: Challenges abound for President Emmanuel Macron and Prime Minister Francois Bayrou after an already tumultuous 2024.

What's wrong with French finances? The most urgent order of business is passing a 2025 budget. Financial markets, ratings agencies and the European Commission are pushing France to bring down its deficit, to comply with EU rules limiting debt and keep France’s borrowing costs from spiraling. That would threaten the stability and prosperity of all countries that share the euro currency.

France’s debt is currently estimated at a staggering 112% of gross domestic product. It grew further after the government gave aid payments to businesses and workers during COVID-19 lockdowns even as the pandemic depressed growth, and capped household energy prices after Russia invaded Ukraine. The bill is now coming due.

But France’s previous government collapsed this month because Marine Le Pen’s far-right party and left-wing lawmakers opposed 60 billion euros in spending cuts and tax hikes in the original 2025 budget plan. Bayrou and new Finance Minister Eric Lombard are expected to scale back some of those promises, but the calculations are tough.

“The political situation is difficult. The international situation is dangerous, and the economic context is fragile,” Lombard, a low-profile banker who advised a Socialist government in the 1990s, said upon taking office.

“The environmental emergency, the social emergency, developing our businesses — these innumerable challenges require us to treat our endemic illness: the deficit,” he said. “The more we are indebted, the more the debt costs, and the more it suffocates the country.”

How long will this government last? This is France’s fourth government in the past year. No party has a parliamentary majority and the new Cabinet can only survive with the support of lawmakers on the center-right and center-left.

Le Pen — Macron’s fiercest rival — was instrumental in ousting the previous government by joining left-wing forces in a no-confidence vote. Bayrou consulted her when forming the new government and Le Pen remains a powerful force.

That angers left-wing groups, who had expected more influence in the new Cabinet, and who say promised spending cuts will hurt working-class families and small businesses hardest. Left-wing voters, meanwhile, feel betrayed ever since a coalition from the left won the most seats in the summer's snap legislative elections but failed to secure a government.

The possibility of a new no-confidence vote looms, though it's not clear how many parties would support it.

What about Macron? Macron has repeatedly said he will remain president until his term expires in 2027.

But France's constitution and current structure, dating from 1958 and called the Fifth Republic, were designed to ensure stability after a period of turmoil. If this new government collapses within months and the country remains in political paralysis, pressure will mount for Macron to step down and call early elections.

Le Pen's ascendant National Rally is intent on bringing Macron down. But Le Pen faces her own headaches: A March court ruling over alleged illegal party financing could see her barred from running for office.

What else is on the agenda? The National Rally and hard-right Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau want tougher immigration rules. But Bayrou wants to focus on making existing rules work. “There are plenty of (immigration) laws that exist. None is being applied,” he said Monday on broadcaster BFM-TV, to criticism from conservatives.

Military spending is a key issue amid fears about European security and pressure from US President-elect Donald Trump for Europe to spend more on its own defense. French Defense Minister Sebastien Lecornu, who champions military aid for Ukraine and ramping up weapons production, kept his job and stressed in a statement Tuesday the need to face down “accumulating threats” against France.

More immediately, Macron wants an emergency law in early January to allow sped-up reconstruction of the cyclone-ravaged French territory of Mayotte in the Indian Ocean off Africa. Thousands of people are in emergency shelters and authorities are still counting the dead more than a week after the devastation.

Meanwhile the government in the restive French South Pacific territory of New Caledonia collapsed Tuesday in a wave of resignations by pro-independence figures — another challenge for the new overseas affairs minister, Manuel Valls, and the incoming Cabinet.

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Mayotte Faces Environment, Biodiversity Crisis after Cyclone

This photograph shows a truck unloading a garbage in a waste disposal site in the city of Tsountsou, on the French Indian Ocean territory of Mayotte on December 26, 2024. (AFP)
This photograph shows a truck unloading a garbage in a waste disposal site in the city of Tsountsou, on the French Indian Ocean territory of Mayotte on December 26, 2024. (AFP)
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Mayotte Faces Environment, Biodiversity Crisis after Cyclone

This photograph shows a truck unloading a garbage in a waste disposal site in the city of Tsountsou, on the French Indian Ocean territory of Mayotte on December 26, 2024. (AFP)
This photograph shows a truck unloading a garbage in a waste disposal site in the city of Tsountsou, on the French Indian Ocean territory of Mayotte on December 26, 2024. (AFP)

Mayotte has changed beyond recognition since a cyclone devastated the Indian Ocean territory, sparking an environment and biodiversity crisis that could last for a decade or more, scientists say.

After barreling into the archipelago at 200 kilometers per hour (125 mph), Cyclone Chido left behind scenes of desolation: Trees mowed down as far as the eye can see, sturdy tree trunks blown apart as if struck by mortars, the previous green of the foliage replaced by a sad brown.

"It's an environmental disaster," said Raima Fadul, a biologist. "There are no more trees. Those still standing have lost their tops... The cyclone flattened the vegetation."

A gigantic baobab over 300 years old collapsed onto a restaurant. Part of the mangrove is now completely bare and black. A three-meter (10-feet) earth mound looms where an acacia tree, half a century old, was uprooted by the violent storm.

One effect of the vegetation's sudden disappearance is that Mayotte's slums, formerly hidden by lush greenery, are now starkly apparent, making visible their number, and their sprawl.

- 'We never realized' -

"All we saw before were mango trees, coconut trees and a forest," said Rouchdat Mourchidi, an education counselor checking on what remains of a family plot on the island's heights. "We never realized there were metal shacks there because they were hidden in vegetation."

Trees have always played the crucial role of channeling rain and slowing down potential floods. Now that they are gone, any torrential downpour will wash soil into the lagoon below, covering the seabed in mud.

As a result, part of the lagoon's coral reef will be killed off, said Fadul, leading to the loss of some of the 300 species of fish, corals, vertebrates and mollusks present in the reef's ecosystem.

On land, wildlife is already suffering from the loss of forest cover. Small dark lemurs called makis are now being spotted increasingly in urban areas where they come in search of food, and where they will probably die.

Bats, pollinators with an important role to play in future reforestation, are also becoming rarer after losing their nesting spots in trees.

There are also grave concerns for lizards, insects and flowering plants that used to proliferate on Mayotte.

- 'In 10 years' time' -

One ray of hope is that Mayotte's tropical climate will help accelerate future tree growth, said Benoit Loussier, regional director of the National Forestry Office.

"In 10 years' time, plantations may have restored a forest cover" of eight meters (26 feet) high, he said.

But this can happen only if the population resists the obvious temptation to convert destroyed forest zones into farmland.

This illegal activity was already in evidence before the cyclone, notably due to desperately poor illegal immigrants practicing subsistence farming.

In 2020, the International Union for Conservation of Nature estimated that 6.7 percent of Mayotte's woodland had been cleared between 2011 and 2016, a deforestation proportion comparable to that seen in Argentina or Indonesia.

The risk of illicit replanting is all the more acute as crops were also destroyed by Cyclone Chido.

Another looming risk is "subsistence poaching" of turtles, warned Lamya Essemlali at Sea Shepherd, a wildlife preservation NGO, as Mayotte's poorest go hungry while food aid is still slow to arrive.

Officially Mayotte has 320,000 inhabitants -- with unregistered undocumented migrants probably adding another 100,000 -- packed into a territory of 374 square kilometers (144 square miles), resulting in a population density eight times that of mainland France.

The median income in Mayotte is 260 euros ($271) a month, according to the national statistics institute Insee, six times less than in mainland France.