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France’s Prime Minister S\u00e9bastien Lecornu has resigned, less than a day after his cabinet was unveiled. <\/p>\n
“The conditions were not fulfilled for me to carry on as prime minister,” Lecornu said on Monday morning, and criticised the unwillingness by political parties to reach compromises.<\/p>\n
The Elys\u00e9e palace made the announcement after Lecornu met President Emmanuel Macron for an hour on Monday morning.<\/p>\n
The shock move comes only 26 days after Lecornu was appointed prime minister following the collapse of the previous government of Fran\u00e7ois Bayrou.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Parties across the board in the National Assembly had fiercely criticised the composition of Lecornu’s cabinet, which was largely unchanged from Bayrou’s, and threatened to vote it down.<\/p>\n
Several parties are clamouring for early elections and some are calling for Macron to go – although he has always said he will not stand down before his term ends in 2027.<\/p>\n
“The only wise thing to do now is to hold elections,” said Marine Le Pen of the hard-right National Rally (RN).<\/p>\n
“The joke’s gone on long enough. French people are fed up. Macron has put the country in an extremely difficult position,” she added.<\/p>\n
The decision on how to proceed now rests with Macron, who must surely be asking himself how long this political charade can be allowed to go on.<\/p>\n
He has three options. He can appoint another prime minister. He can once again dissolve the National Assembly. Or he can resign himself.<\/p>\n
The last is the least likely, while the first would be his natural choice.<\/p>\n
However, who now could he name to form a government? Lecornu \u2013 the ultimate Macron loyalist \u2013 was seen as his last resort, but now he too has failed.<\/p>\n
He could appoint a Socialist, on the basis that the left deserves a go at government – but a Socialist administration would itself not take long to fall.<\/p>\n
So the logic must surely be for option two: for new legislative elections.<\/p>\n
The result would probably be a rout for the pro-Macron centre, and a big victory for the hard-right of Marine Le Pen. But when every other recourse fails, few avenues remain.<\/p>\n
Lecornu, a former armed forces minister, was France’s fifth prime minister in under two years. <\/p>\n
In his brief speech outside the H\u00f4tel de Matignon, the prime minister’s residence, which he only occupied for less than a month, Lecornu sharply criticised the “partisan appetites” of political factions, who he said “are all behaving as if they had an absolute majority”. <\/p>\n
“I was ready for compromise but all parties wanted the other party to adopt their programmes in their entirety,” he said. <\/p>\n
“It wouldn’t need much for this to work,” he added, saying, however, that parties needed to be more humble and “to cast some egos aside”.<\/p>\n
French politics has been highly unstable since July 2024, when Macron called for snap parliamentary elections in a bid to achieve a clear majority following a bruising loss for his party in the European Parliament vote.<\/p>\n
Instead the elections resulted in a hung parliament divided into ideologically opposed factions deeply at odds with one another and unwilling to work together. <\/p>\n
This has made it difficult for any prime minister to garner the necessary support to pass any bills.<\/p>\n
Michel Barnier was appointed prime minister last September but was ousted within three months. <\/p>\n
The government of his successor Fran\u00e7ois Bayrou’s too was voted down after nine months after parliament refused to back his austerity budget, which aimed to slash government spending by \u20ac44bn ($51bn; \u00a338bn). <\/p>\n
France’s deficit reached 5.8% of its GDP in 2024 and its national debt is 114% of its GDP. That is the third highest public debt in the eurozone after Greece and Italy, and equivalent to almost \u20ac50,000 per French citizen.<\/p>\n
Stocks fell sharply on the Paris exchange after the news of Lecornu’s resignation broke on Monday morning.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n