Emmanuel Macron should name a prime minister to push through a budget and then call early presidential elections to solve France’s political crisis, his first prime minister has said.
Édouard Philippe’s comments come after France’s third prime minister in a year, Sébastien Lecornu, resigned on Monday after his bid to form a government fell apart.
Macron has asked him to make a last-ditch plan for stability by the end of Wednesday – but support for the French president appears to be waning even among his allies.
Philippe, who was prime minister from 2017-20 and now leads the centrist Horizons party, said he was “not in favour of his immediate and abrupt resignation”, but that it was up to the president to live up to his mandate.
Meanwhile, Gabriel Attal – who leads Macron’s Renaissance party and was prime minister for six months in 2024 – went on national TV on Monday night to say he “no longer understands the decisions made by the president of the republic”.
The president had tried to re-establish control three times in the past year, said Attal, and it was now time to share power with other parties: “I think we should try something else.”
Until now, pressure on the 47-year-old French president to resign has come largely from his political opponents on the more radical left and hard right.
The public interventions from his allies indicate just how serious the political crisis has become.
Macron, who has been in office since 2017, was captured on video walking alone by the River Seine in Paris on Monday, followed by his bodyguards, as the latest crisis swirled around his presidency.
His entourage indicated that he would “take responsibility” if Lecornu’s last-ditch talks failed, without specifiying that that would mean.
Macron’s centrist bloc lost its parliamentary majority after he called a snap parliamentary election in response to a defeat in last year’s European Parliament vote.
Since then, he has struggled to push through an annual budget to bring down the country’s soaring public debt. France’s budget deficit is projected to hit 5.4% of economic output (GDP) this year.
Last month, François Bayrou resigned after losing a confidence vote in the French parliament when he tried to push through swingeing budget cuts. Now Lecornu, his successor, has resigned after only 26 days in the job, blaming “partisan appetites” among coalition parties.
Lecornu began talks with political leaders from the centre ground on Tuesday morning, in an attempt to find a way out of the impasse. Philippe said he would take part in the talks, although Bruno Retailleau, from the right-wing Republicans, said he would only meet Lecornu one-to-one.
“It’s clear we’re today in the middle of a political crisis that dismays and worries our fellow citizens,” Philippe told RTL radio. “This political crisis is bringing the state into decline… the authority and continuity of the state aren’t being respected.”
Philippe, whose Horizons party has been part of Macron’s government throughout his second presidential term, rejected calls from political opponents for the president’s immediate resignation – but said it was up to Macron himself to find a solution.
“[Immediate resignation] would have a terrible impact and would prevent a presidential election taking place under good conditions,” he told RTL on Tuesday.
However, he argued Macron should avert the crisis by naming a prime minister who could put through a budget, guarantee the continued workings of the state, and leave in an “orderly manner”.
“When you’re head of state, you don’t use the institutions, you serve them – and he should serve the institutions by finding a solution to this political crisis.”
Macron’s poll ratings have nose-dived in recent months and one survey of 1,000 French people conducted for newspaper Le Figaro suggested that 53% of them thought he should stand down.
Meanwhile, a van burst into flames on the same street as the prime minister’s residence on the Rue de Varenne on Tuesday morning, in what commentators suggested was symbolic of the continuing political crisis.
