For the fourth time in little over a year, French President Emmanuel Macron has appointed a prime minister and charged them with forming a government. However, his latest decision to re-appoint Sébastien Lecornu, who had resigned from the post just four days earlier, raised eyebrows, both within France and around the world.
Whether he will be able to navigate his way through a fragmented parliament to bring a degree of stability or simply become another casualty of France’s current political crisis remains to be seen.
Origins of the Crisis
European elections were held in France on June 9, 2024 and delivered a resounding victory for the far-right Rassemblement national (RN), headed by Jordan Bardella and Marine Le Pen. The RN won over 31% of the vote, almost 17 percentage points ahead of Macron’s centrist Ensemble coalition, which came second.
In response, Macron dissolved the lower house – the National Assembly, provoking legislative elections which were not otherwise due to be held until 2027. Despite projections during the campaign that the RN would win an outright majority, the Ensemble coalition and the Nouveau Front Populaire (NFP), a left-wing alliance comprising the Socialists (PS), Greens (LE), Communists (PCF) and the radical-left La France Insoumise (LFI), withdrew candidates between the first and second rounds, clearing the way for anti-far-right tactical voting to deny the RN a majority.
In the end, the NFP won 182 seats, Ensemble 168 and the RN and its allies 142, while the centre-right Les Républicains (LR) finished fourth with 46 seats, leaving all groups well short of the 289 seats necessary for a majority.
A Succession of Failures
President Macron initially turned to veteran conservative politician and former EU Brexit negotiator, Michel Barnier, to be the new Prime Minister. He formed a minority government composed of Ensemble and LR.
Implicit in Barnier’s appointment, as well as the selection of immigration hardliner Bruno Retailleau as Minister of the Interior, was the aim to pacify the RN despite their non-participation in the government.
However, just three months later, a motion of no confidence was adopted, voted for by both the NFP and the RN, after Barnier used article 49.3 of the French constitution, which allows a text to be adopted without a vote in the National Assembly, to attempt to pass his budget. This obliged him to resign as Prime Minister.
After that, Macron appointed close ally François Bayrou to the post, hoping that he would be more palatable to the centre-left, primarily the PS, thus avoiding relying on the RN to not vote the government down.
Whilst he was able to pass his budget for 2025, again using article 49.3 but this time avoiding losing a motion of no confidence, Bayrou lost the confidence of the centre-left, far-right and factions of LR throughout the year. In September, the National Assembly voted against confidence in Bayrou’s government, forcing the Prime Minister to resign.
Lecornu, another Macron ally, was appointed a day later, but resigned in early October just hours after unveiling his cabinet, which was heavily criticised for being largely similar to the previous government. His subsequent re-appointment led LR leadership to vote against joining the government, thus making the parliamentary minority even smaller.
Lecornu’s New Approach
With direct support from just 162 of the 577 deputies, Lecornu’s task is clear: to try to find consensus in the National Assembly on each piece of legislation, principally the 2026 budget.
However, with the RN calling for the government’s collapse and new legislative elections, and LFI wanting President Macron to resign, Lecornu will be relying on the tacit support of the centre-left PS and centre-right LR to not be ejected from office.
To walk this tightrope, Lecornu’s new government contains the largest number of independents since 2020 and lacks a number of the political ‘heavyweights’ from his first government. He also confirmed on Tuesday that he would postpone the controversial pension reform until the 2027 presidential election, a decision the PS said was necessary for them not to file a motion of no confidence against the government. LR has also said it will not presently support motions of no confidence, as that would mean no budget for France.
It appears that, for the immediate future, Lecornu has steadied the ship, although if there’s one thing the last 15 months have shown, nothing is certain in French politics at the moment.
