The plagued President Emmanuel Macron appointed resigning defense minister Sebastian Lecorne as prime minister, and handed him the difficult task of finding consensus in a divided parliament and passing the 2026 budget.
Earlier on Monday, Prime Minister François Bailloux filed his resignation, and Macron accepted it. He was kicked out after taking office just nine months later and was reverted for failing to fulfill his central promise.
Before Confidence could vote, Belloo warned lawmakers that expelling him would not solve the country’s problems. “You have the power to overthrow the government, but you have no power to erase reality,” he said. “The reality remains unforgiving. Costs continue to rise, and the burden of already unbearable debt will become heavier and more expensive.”
Lecornu is currently facing a double challenge of pushing France out of the financial mire, while it is ruled by the government for massive protests. A nationwide demonstration and highway blockade will be set on Wednesday, followed by a wide union LED strike on September 18th.
The French presidency told Lecorne that Macron “has been tasked with consulting political forces, represented by Parliament, with the aim of adopting the nation’s budget and building an agreement essential to decisions that will take place in the coming months.”
Chaos can be traced back to Macron’s dramatic decision last year to call for a snap vote. In the European elections in June 2024, challenging the prominent success of the far-right party, the National Assembly (RN), the president rolled the dice in parliamentary votes. Gambling backfired, his centralist block lost seats on the far right and far left, making France virtually inordinated with a divided parliament.
But there was no need to do this. Founded in 1958 by President Charles de Gaulle, France’s Fifth Republic was designed to end the chronic instability that plagued the Third and Fourth Republics in the early 20th century. The new constitution has created a majority system to give executives broad powers and avoid short-lived governments. As a result, for decades, two mainstream parties on the left and right alternated power.
Macron blasted that order in 2017 and became the first president elected without the support of major established political parties. He was re-elected in 2022 and soon lost a majority in Congress due to extreme crowds of voters. Two years of fragile rules continued, and Macron repeatedly enforced Article 49.3 of the Constitution. It promoted the law without votes, increasing the dissatisfaction of many opposition lawmakers and the French people.
In the 2024 SNAP election, the left won the most seats in the second round of votes, but still hadn’t reached a majority after the far right ruled the first. However, when Macron refused to accept the Prime Minister’s choice, the left’s hopes of forming a minority government collapsed. Unlike Germany and Italy, France does not have a tradition of Union buildings. Instead, the politics have been shaped for over 60 years by a presidency-controlled system.
By choosing the prime minister from his own rank, Macron risks hearing deaf tone.
The 39-year-old Recorne is considered a political survivor, the only minister to serve on a continuous basis since Macron’s first inauguration in 2017. The logic behind his appointment is that Lecornes may be able to do business with socialists and make their budgets even tastier. But that path now appears very unlikely.
Socialists want to tax the wealthy and roll back Macron’s tax cuts on business. As a centralist, Bailou barely walked that tightrope. The Lecorne, located on the right, may not be particularly agile.
One potential blessing of salvation is that neither left nor right wants the snap election promoted by Marine Le Pen, a far-right figure. This gives you an incentive to work with the Macron government, but there is no price.
Away from politics, the wider economic turmoil rattles French investors.
The yields on French government bonds, or investors’ demands, exceed the interest rates on bonds in Spain, Portugal and Greece, once at the heart of the eurozone debt crisis. The potential downgrade of France’s sovereign debt rating review on Friday would bring another blow to the country’s economic position in Europe.
Following these turbulent years, the political situation is also bleak. If another snap council election occurs, a recent Elabe poll shows that the far-right RN will appear above, the left will be second, and Macron’s Centrist Bloc will be farthest third.
Many in France now assume that the far right will ultimately take power – if not now, they do not believe that such outcomes will solve the country’s challenges after the 2027 presidential election.
The public’s trust in the political class is broken and anger is set to spill over the streets. The far left has called for a nationwide protest against austerity on Wednesday, calling for banner “Brocons propaganda” (Let’s block everything), vowing to paralyse the country with disabilities and civil disobedience.
The resigning home minister warns of “severe confusion.” The union is planning another wave of mobilization on September 18th, with strikes expected across hospitals and rail services.
Dominique Mosy, senior analyst at Montaigne at the Paris-based think tank Institute, said he couldn’t remember such a deep deadlock moment in the Fifth Republic.
“Degaard survived an attempted assassination and there was the Algerian War.
“A change in the regime sounds inevitable, but we don’t know how it will happen or who will do the work. We are in the transition stage between a system that no longer works and a system that no one can imagine.”
This is a developing story and will be updated.
