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Just weeks before President-elect Donald Trump enters the White House and with a war still raging on Europe's doorstep, two of that continent's most powerful economies are now under the control of caretaker governments. As Willem Marx reports, the political instability in both France and Germany could have wide-ranging consequences for European security as well as transatlantic relations.
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YAEL BRAUN-PIVET: (Speaking French).
WILLEM MARX, BYLINE: The majority had decided to act - the French Assembly National, or National Assembly, voting to remove Michel Barnier as France's prime minister Wednesday night. In accordance with the Constitution, assembly speaker Yael Braun-Pivet instructed Barnier to submit his government's resignation to the president.
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BRAUN-PIVET: (Speaking French).
MARX: The move means that the president, Emmanuel Macron, and France now face a bit of a bind, with no obvious route for a replacement government that can rely on a stable Parliamentary majority and many months until more elections can be called. But perhaps the biggest problem will be passing next year's budget.
MATHIEU GALLARD: Regarding the adoption of the budget, nothing can move, can change in the Parliament before we have a new government.
MARX: Mathieu Gallard is a pollster at Ipsos who says political fragmentation may be France's main challenge.
GALLARD: We have three blocs - a left-wing bloc, a center-right bloc and a radical right bloc. And so it's very difficult to have stable government, to have a prime minister who can stay in office for a long time and to pass a budget, to pass major reforms, to pass laws. And that's a problem.
MARX: Meanwhile, in neighboring Germany, Chancellor Olaf Scholz has also lost his own governing majority in the Bundestag and may now limp on until national elections in February. All this adds up to something European leaders will have to take seriously soon, says Tanja Borzel, a professor of political science at the Freie University in Berlin.
TANJA BORZEL: I don't think we're facing a crisis yet because a crisis entails an existential threat, and I don't think that the European Union faces an existential threat yet. However, it's a major challenge.
MARX: And with political polarization and social distrust of government rising on both sides of the Atlantic, the timing of all this is particularly unfortunate, Borzel says.
TANJA BORZEL: It's not easy - right? - because these two countries have always taken the lead in helping Europe to speak one voice, and I think that's what - it's required more than ever with Trump taking over the presidency in the U.S.
MARX: Even before these political crises, one major area of concern for many Europeans ahead of a new U.S. administration centered on the continent's security.
ALEXANDRA DE HOOP SCHEFFER: For the EU today, the No. 1 urgency is the Ukraine war. And there's, as we know, a certain dose of anxiety in terms of how the Trump administration will handle the war in Ukraine.
MARX: Alexandra de Hoop Scheffer is the Paris-based president of the German Marshall Fund of the United States think tank and previously worked for NATO as well as the French Defense Ministry.
DE HOOP SCHEFFER: At the end of the day, domestic politics will shape foreign policy decisions. And if, in Germany and in France, the situation is unstable, then this will obviously have implications in the transatlantic context, where you will have a Trump administration that has been very clear that he wants to find an agreement to end this war in Ukraine.
MARX: The twin economic engines of Europe may already be spluttering slightly, while next year could bring an entirely new era on both sides of the Atlantic.
For NPR News, I'm Willem Marx.
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