French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu on Thursday survived two no-confidence votes in parliament and won key support from his Socialist Party thanks to President Emmanuel Macron’s pledge to suspend controversial pension reforms.
Two motions put forward by the far-left France Enboud and the far-right National Rally (RN) received just 271 and 144 votes respectively, far short of the 289 votes needed to overthrow L’Ecornu’s government.
Lecorne’s proposal to postpone pension reform until after the 2027 presidential election helped sway the Socialist Party and gave the government a lifeline in a deeply divided parliament.
Despite the grace period, the motion highlighted the weaknesses of Macron’s government in its final term.
RN party leader Jordan Bardera wrote of X: “A majority united by horse-trading has managed to maintain its position today at the expense of the national interest.”
The French government bond market remained strong after consecutive votes, with investors widely expecting a government victory.
L’Ecornu threatens to wipe out one of Macron’s main economic legacies by putting pension reform on the brink at a time when France’s finances are in crisis and the president has little domestic accomplishments after eight years in office.
There are 265 members of parliament from political parties who have said they will vote to overthrow Les Cornes, but only a handful of rebels from other groups have joined the cause.
Had Mr. L’Ecornu lost either vote, he and his cabinet would have had to immediately resign, Mr. Macron would have come under enormous pressure to call a snap election, and France would have been plunged further into crisis.
But despite the outcome of Thursday’s vote, Lecorne still faces weeks of difficult negotiations in Congress over passing a slimmed-down 2026 budget, during which he could be overthrown at any time.
“The French people need to know that we are doing this work to give France a budget, because it is fundamental for the future of our country,” said Yaël Braun Pivé, speaker of the National Assembly and an ally of Mr. Macron.
“I am glad that today the majority of Parliament is operating in this spirit: hard work, finding compromises and doing the best we can,” she added.
Having won pension concessions, the Socialist Party on Wednesday aimed to include a tax on billionaires in its 2026 budget, underscoring how weak Lecorne’s hand in negotiations is.
France is in the midst of its worst political crisis in decades. Successive minority governments have tried to push deficit-cutting budgets through hard-line parliaments split into three different ideological blocs.
Reforming France’s generous pension system has been politically fraught since Socialist President François Mitterrand lowered the retirement age from 65 to 60 in 1982.
The average effective retirement age in France is just 60.7 years, while the OECD average is 64.4 years.
Under President Macron’s reforms, the legal retirement age will be raised by two years to 64 by 2030. This would only bring France’s policies in line with other European Union member states, but it would also chip away at important social benefits that the left loves.
