End to five days of suspense. The decision has been a long time coming, but finally Emmanuel Macron reappointed Sébastien Lecornu as Prime Minister of France this Friday, who resigned at the beginning of the week after holding the position for only 27 days.
Lecornu had presented his resignation to the president on Monday hours after announcing the composition of his Government, opening a new political crisis in France. Criticism of the composition of the Executive by Bruno Retailleau – Minister of the Interior and head of the conservative party Los Republicanos (LR) – on the same night of his announcement precipitated the immediate implosion of the Executive, formed by a coalition of centrists and conservatives.
After being re-elected, Lecornu, considered a loyalist to the president, said in X that he intends to put an end to “this instability that damages the image of France and its interests.” “This can only be done under certain conditions,” he assures, specifying in particular that his ministers must “embody renewal” and that their “mission” is to provide the country with a budget by the end of the year.
After accepting his resignation on Monday, Macron instructed Lecornu to carry out consultations with all political forces with a view to preparing a “stability platform” that would allow reaching a minimum agreement for the nomination of a new prime minister and the processing of budgets before December 31, as required by the French Constitution.
At the end of the consultations, Lecornu had stated on Wednesday night that he considered that “a path was possible” and that the president was in a position to “appoint a prime minister in the next 48 hours”, a deadline later confirmed by the Elysee Palace. For Lecornu, “an absolute majority of the political forces do not want a new dissolution” and he assured that, in his opinion, “a relative majority of the political formations in the Assembly is willing to reach an agreement on the budget.”
However, Lecornu himself seemed to rule himself out that same night. “My mission is over,” he stated, after the consultations. He pointed out that he had resigned because “the conditions were not met” to be able to govern and that, “to this day, they continue not to be met.”
On Friday, before announcing his final decision, Macron had gathered at the Elysée, early in the afternoon, the leaders of the main political forces represented in the Assembly, with the exception of France Insoumise (LFI) and the extreme right.
Upon leaving the presidential headquarters after the meeting of approximately two and a half hours, the head of the environmentalists, Marine Tondelier, had declared herself disconcerted and had indicated that the new prime minister would not be left-wing. “All this is going to end very badly,” he warned. For his part, the leader of the Socialists, Olivier Faure, had assured that he did not rule out voting in favor of a possible motion of censure of the new head of the Government. Both, along with the Communist Party, have been pushing for a prime minister to be appointed from their ranks after the collapse of the last three governments made up of centrists and conservatives.
“Those who have been the scene of this comedy have been made ridiculous,” Jean-Luc Mélenchon, leader of LFI, reacted after learning of the re-election.
Instability
Instability has persisted in the French political landscape since the 2024 legislative elections, which resulted in a deeply divided National Assembly, with no clear majorities. The lower house of Parliament has overthrown two prime ministers (Michel Barnier and François Bayrou) in less than a year, two failures that join Lecornu's resignation to mark a period of serious political uncertainty.
After this succession of ephemeral center-right heads of government, a part of the left (which France Insoumise has not joined) demanded that the president appoint a progressive figure, a possibility that Macron has ruled out with each change of government.
In France, the president has the exclusive authority to appoint the prime minister and the Constitution does not establish conditions or limits in this regard. Institutional logic dictates that the prime minister be a personality who has the support of a large majority of the Assembly, but in the current situation of parliamentary fragmentation no one has been able to build a sufficient majority.
After Lecornu's failure, many voices, even in his own party, demanded that Macron change direction and try to build an agreement with the left, particularly with the socialists. “Now we have to share power,” said Gabriel Attal, current secretary general of Renaissance, the party founded by Macron, on Monday. “Not everything has been tried; what the president has done is try the same thing three times in one year, I think something else can be tried.”
Talks
Three major issues seem to have dominated the negotiations in this regard: the composition of the Executive, the degree of austerity that the next budget will include and the possible suspension of the pension reform that Macron had approved in 2023 and which will progressively raise the minimum retirement age from 62 to 64 years. The suspension of the reform has been one of the great demands of the progressive parties.
“All the issues discussed during the consultations held in recent days will be submitted to parliamentary debate: deputies and senators will be able to assume their responsibility, and the debates will have to go to the end,” said Lecornu.
Added to these three issues are the parties' calculations about the possible results of new legislative elections, in which the extreme right appears as a great favorite and in which both the central bloc and the left-wing parties could lose a large number of deputies. This pressure will weigh on the final decision of many parties when it comes to censuring Lecornu.
The French media these days evoked a Socialist Party divided as to the path to follow. Although no one in the PS wanted new legislative elections (in which the disunity of the left would take its toll), some defended that governing without a majority, with the limitations imposed by the situation of French public finances, would mean detrimental wear and tear in the face of the next electoral events. An internal current, including former president François Hollande, defended a non-censorship pact, instead of direct participation in the Government.
On the opposite side of the political spectrum, the Republican party would also have experienced tough internal debates. According to several media outlets these days, there is a division between the leaders, opposed to any review of the pension reform, and a majority of the deputies, who would be willing to resign themselves to a compromise to avoid new elections in which they could lose their most seats in favor of the extreme right.