France's President Emmanuel Macron speaks to members of the media at the European Political Community summit in Copenhagen, Denmark, October 2. Mr. Macron’s personal popularity has also plummeted and there have been growing calls for him to resign.Leonhard Foeger/Reuters
French President Emmanuel Macron plans to appoint a new prime minister within 48 hours, easing a political crisis that started earlier this week with the resignation of Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu.
Having taken office less than a month ago, Mr. Lecornu stunned the nation on Monday by abruptly announcing his resignation barely a day after unveiling his cabinet. He’s the third prime minister to step down this year and his departure left the National Assembly unable to move forward on a budget for 2026.
Mr. Macron had asked Mr. Lecornu to negotiate with political parties for two more days to map out a way forward. On Wednesday, Mr. Lecornu said that despite the extra negotiations, he was still unable to form a government.
“Tonight my mission is over,” he said in French, during an interview on TV channel France 2.
However, Mr. Lecornu said that his discussions showed there was a willingness among enough groups in the National Assembly to pass a budget and avoid an election. He added that he told Mr. Macron that while the path was difficult, “the prospects of dissolution were receding, and that I think the situation allows the President to appoint a prime minister within the next 48 hours.”
Mr. Macron has yet to comment, but in a statement late Wednesday his office said that the President would heed the advice and appoint a prime minister within the next two days.
In the France 2 interview, Mr. Lecornu gave no indication that a future prime minister will have any more success at forming a stable administration.
“Our political parties are a little lacking in life. In the privacy of conversations, political leaders want to move forward, but activists are pushing for the hardest lines,” he said.
Mr. Lecornu, who will stay on in a caretaker role until a new government is formed, told France 2 that he has drafted a budget which will be presented to parliament next week. “It won’t be perfect, there’s a lot to debate,” he said. “The debates have to start.”
French politics remained highly unpredictable on Monday, a political analyst said, after the country's new Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu resigned only hours after naming the members of his new cabinet.
Reuters
One of the most contentious issues is whether the proposed budget will include spending cuts and tax hikes, and if it will scrap pension reforms that Mr. Macron pushed for in 2023. The reforms include gradually raising the retirement age from 62 to 64 by 2030, which has been widely unpopular. Dropping the reforms could cost as much as €3-billion in 2027, or $4.8-billion, Mr. Lecornu said.
Successive French prime ministers have been grappling with France’s soaring debt, which is on track to reach 116.7 per cent of gross domestic product in 2026, the highest in the Eurozone. The country’s budget deficit is nearly double the 3-per-cent-of-GDP target set by the European Union.
Mr. Macron has won some relief from the turmoil, but he still faces huge uncertainty.
Members of parliament on all sides have blamed him for the current deadlock in the National Assembly. He called a snap election in 2024 which cost his centrist coalition, Ensemble, a working majority and left the National Assembly divided into three blocks: a centrist alliance, a hard-left coalition led by France Unbowed and a far-right group led by Marine Le Pen’s National Rally.
Analysts say Mr. Macron is unlikely to want another election because polls suggest the paralysis would likely continue with some gains for the National Rally.
Mr. Macron’s personal popularity has also plummeted and there have been growing calls, including from some Ensemble MPs, for him to resign. Mr. Macron’s second term as President ends in April, 2027, and he cannot run for a third.
Mr. Lecornu said it was not the time to change presidents, but others have said the only way out of the crisis is for Mr. Macron to quit. “Let’s hold the presidential election right away,” France Unbowed’s leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon said Wednesday on X.
John Goodman, the director of Syracuse University Strasbourg in France, doubted that Mr. Macron would resign and said he was more likely to try to cobble together another government.
“Macron would like to play out the clock,” Dr. Goodman said. The President’s hope, he added, was “that he can cobble something together, get the budget passed this year, and that will carry us through to December, 2026, and the elections are April, 2027 – so it will basically get him through his mandate.”
He added that France was probably “in some kind of limping along situation for 18 months, which is just a horrible suffering for the whole country.”
Jean-Yves Camus, a Paris-based political scientist, called the political situation “an absolute mess” and agreed that Mr. Macron won’t step aside.
However, he said Mr. Macron could still call a parliamentary election before the end of the year if the new prime minister is also forced to resign. “Potentially, Macron may announce quite soon, but we do not know exactly the day, that he chooses to call snap election,” Dr. Camus said.