French Government Survives No-Confidence Vote

France’s government lived to see another day on Wednesday, after it survived a no-confidence vote in Parliament and gave the recently appointed prime minister a temporary reprieve from months of political turmoil and the country a promise of stability, at least in the short term.

The no-confidence motion was supported by only 128 lawmakers in the 577-seat National Assembly, France’s lower house, short of the absolute majority required. Had it passed, the motion would have forced the centrist prime minister, François Bayrou, and his cabinet to resign.

The motion’s failure ensures safe passage of a 2025 budget bill that France needs badly — it has been operating with temporary stopgap funding since the start of the year — and that the government hopes will rein in the country’s surging debt and deficit, with a goal of generating 50 billion euros in savings through tax increases and spending cuts.

The budget bill now goes to the Senate for final approval on Thursday. Mr. Bayrou is pushing through other bills that govern spending on health care and other social security expenses, exposing his government to new no-confidence motions, but he is expected to survive those as well.

Mr. Bayrou’s bigger problem of running a government in hostile territory has not been solved. The lower house is deeply divided, with a centrist-conservative bloc that supports him and two main opposition wings — a tenuous alliance of left-wing parties called the New Popular Front and the anti-immigrant far-right National Rally party — that do not.

But the vote and the new budget will for now give one of Europe’s leading economies a semblance of stability. Mr. Bayrou, a centrist ally of President Emmanuel Macron, was appointed just over a month ago — the fourth prime minister in a year, unusual for France.