French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu’s government will survive to see another day. After high-stakes policy speeches and Tuesday’s budget announcement, the Socialist Party (PS) said it would not join the effort to overthrow the government, handing a temporary lifeline tied to interests to the 39-year-old prime minister, who resigned days earlier and was reelected on Friday.
In a speech to parliament, L’Ecornu promised to cancel French President Emmanuel Macron’s signature pension reform. This policy would raise the retirement age from 62 to 64, and its abolition has been a totemic demand of the left. The prime minister said the cost of the outage would rise to 400 million euros ($460 million) in 2026 and 1.8 billion euros ($2.1 billion) in 2027.
It was a high price to pay for political stability, but the general feeling was that France could not afford a repeat of the turmoil that had gripped the country over the past two weeks. Macron, who is facing unprecedented pressure and calls for his resignation, may also be breathing a small sigh of relief.
Earlier in the day, the president warned party leaders that a no-confidence vote would trigger a snap election and could lead to a rise in France’s far right.
Boris Barrow, the socialist leader in the National Assembly, did not explicitly commit to bailing out the government, but said the PS was “able to compromise”, citing the party’s influence.
“We can overthrow the government. We’ve done it twice now,” Vallow warned. “Our only compass is the national interest, the interest of the French people.”
Party leaders have privately admitted that concerns about the snap poll weighed on their choice of party, as the PS risks losing seats in a polarized political landscape between the far right and the far left.
The current crisis can be traced back to Macron’s fateful decision in June 2024 to dissolve parliament following the party’s disastrous performance in the European elections. Spurred by the far-right’s rise, he rolled the dice on an immediate vote in Congress.
The gamble backfired, with his centrist party losing seats to both extremes and leaving France with a tripartite parliament and a government unable to pass major legislation.
The ensuing instability has continued to plague President Macron ever since, and its effects are now reverberating throughout the economy. France’s ballooning national debt has already eaten into the scalps of its two prime ministers. Both Michel Barnier and François Bayrou offered austerity, but were quickly ousted in confidence votes.
This uncertainty is also putting pressure on corporate confidence. France’s economy is already struggling with national debt levels that are about twice the European target and was downgraded by credit rating agency Fitch in September.
And Lecorne’s survival is still in limbo. Macron accepted his resignation as prime minister last Monday, when his government collapsed, and was reappointed on Friday.
Far-right and far-left opposition parties are furious at the president’s choice to stick with Lecorne and are calling for a vote of no confidence in the president, which he faces on Thursday.
Only 20 votes are needed to form a majority against him, making the upcoming budget debate both important and tense. It is a fragile equilibrium that could collapse at any time.
