France has bid farewell to its fourth prime minister in just over three years. François Bayrou, a 74-year-old centrist, resigned on Tuesday after only nine months in the role.

President Emmanuel Macron will appoint a new prime minister "in the coming days," the presidential palace said on Monday, after parliament voted to bring down the government over its plan to rein in the soaring national debt. Bayrou, who had called for a confidence vote himself, was due to submit his resignation on Tuesday morning, his office told Reuters.

On Monday, far-right leader and three-time presidential candidate Marine Le Pen urged Macron to dissolve parliament and call snap legislative elections to end months of political gridlock. Speaking in the National Assembly before the vote, she said holding elections was "not an option but an obligation" and predicted it would bring about "the end of the agony of a phantom government".

Bayrou, forced out after just nine months in charge, is a veteran centrist who was appointed in December after convincing Macron he could restore stability to French politics.

The fall of his government on Monday underlined France’s ongoing instability, exposing a nation struggling with political deadlock and an inability to confront its deepening financial crisis.

Bayrou had introduced the confidence motion to underline the seriousness of France’s growing debt and budget deficit, insisting that the country needed to make annual savings of at least 51 billion dollars.

But lawmakers in the National Assembly dealt him a heavy blow, with 364 voting against his government and 194 in favour, while abstentions and absences made up the remainder of the 577-seat chamber.

With the Assembly split between far-right, centrist and left-wing blocs, each strong enough to block the others, France has been adrift since Macron called snap parliamentary elections in June 2024, a move that reshaped politics but failed to deliver stability.

The country has become close to ungovernable, as the traditional alternation between moderate left and right has been replaced by the growing weight of political extremes in a system with little culture of compromise or coalition-building, like in Italy or Germany. The three-way division of power between the far left, the centre and the far right has led to paralysis, and Bayrou, hesitant and slow to strike agreements, seemed to allow the drift to continue.

Monday’s collapse also echoed the turmoil of last year, when Bayrou’s predecessor Michel Barnier was toppled by a no-confidence vote in December, sparking fears France would fail to pass its 2025 budget and sink into financial uncertainty.