Welcome to the Euro Intelligence Podcast. I'm Wolfgang Munchau and with me, I'm Susanna Munchank and Jack Smith.

Today we will talk about France. In about a week's time, the Prime Minister will be subject to a vote of confidence he has called for, a watershed moment in French politics.

We've written about this at Eurointelligence at length

and frequently, and it's one of our main themes at this moment, and potentially a watershed

for Europe as well. Zazana, tell us what happened, what are the issues, and why is this

important?

To understand what's going on is we need a little bit of set up at the scene and give a little bit of context.

We have Emmanuel Macron his second term.

He started already with not having a majority in Parliament.

He thought he could solve that and get a majority by dissolving the parliament last year after

the European elections and having a new elections. So in these new elections, there were a lot of

tactical maneuvering, but the result was in even more fragmented parliament than before. So we are

now a prime minister number four under the second term since 2022.

We have four prime ministers under Emilin Macron's second term.

Lots of unhappiness about the pension reform that took a lot of protests at that time.

Things to get through is next to impossible. French doesn't have

the culture like other European countries, for example, in coalition building. It's the way how

the constitution is set up. We have a president and we have a prime minister. And if there is a

polarity, usually it used to be expressed by having the president from one party

and the prime minister of the government coming through legislative elections,

winning those elections and being the counterpart in this cohabitation, as it is called in France.

Now, the French don't have the culture of making on their daily basis,

...