Emmanuel Macron’s office has disclosed that the French President will name a new Prime Minister by Friday evening.
This hints at Macron’s hopes that a sixth Prime Minister in less than two years will manage to steer a budget through the country’s deeply fragmented parliament.
Government Spokesperson Aurore Bergé said that this might be the last chance. The Spokesperson expressed belief that this is the last chance for politicians to regain credibility, adding, “…all of this is only strengthening the chances and capabilities of the far right to take power.”
The country’s longstanding political crisis deepened earlier this week after the Prime Minister, Sébastien Lecornu, resigned after 27 days in office.
Lecornu’s decision left Macron with few options; call snap legislative elections, resign as President or attempt to find a new Prime Minister.
Macron has repeatedly fended off calls to hold fresh legislative elections, which polls suggest would probably return another divided parliament or usher in a far-right government. He has also stressed that he has no intention of resigning before the end of his mandate in 2027.
To buy more time to weigh his options, Macron asked Lecornu to stay on for two more days to hold last-ditch talks aimed at charting a way out of the spiralling political crisis that has gripped the EU’s second-largest economy.
After hours spent speaking to parties across the political spectrum – save the far right and hard left who declined to take part – Lecornu appeared cautiously optimistic that a solution could be found.
His impression was that a majority of parliamentarians were not keen on new elections. He told a public broadcaster that there’s a majority that can govern. “I feel that a path is still possible,” he added. He acknowledged, however, that it would be “difficult.”
France has faced political turmoil for more than a year, after snap parliamentary elections in 2024 yielded a parliament with no majority. Instead, parliamentarians were divided among three roughly equal blocs; the left, the far right and Macron’s own centre-right alliance.
The ideological divisions were exacerbated as questions swirled over how best to tackle France’s ballooning budget deficit, projected to exceed 5.5% of GDP this year, almost twice the EU’s permitted limit, and the upcoming 2027 presidential race, which has left political parties keen to stake out ideological territory in the lead-up to the vote.
A Challenge For Macron
In recent days, comments from leaders on the far right and hard-left have reinforced the scope of the challenge that lie ahead.
On Wednesday, the far-right leader Marine Le Pen vowed her party would “vote against everything,” including any future Prime Minister appointed by Macron. She called instead for new parliamentary elections.
Mathilde Panot, the parliamentary leader of the hard-left France Unbowed (LFI), meanwhile, said that the party’s MPs would vote against “any government that persists with Macron’s policies.”
One solution could be the appointment of a Prime Minister from the moderate left, though this would mean that Macron would have to accept the possibility that some of his landmark policies, such as the 2023 pensions change that raised the minimum retirement age for most workers to 64, could be scaled back.
After meeting with Lecornu this week, the leader of the Greens, Marine Tondelier, whose party is allied with the Socialists, said that France had “never been closer” to getting a new leftwing Prime Minister, adding that another appointee from Macron’s camp “wouldn’t last a minute.”
Amid speculation that the centre-left Socialist party could be a contender to lead a minority government, momentum appears to be growing to address one of the party’s key demands to scrap the pensions reform.
Speaking on Thursday, Bergé, the government spokesperson, said that while the demographic and budgetary reality that had forced the government to push through the deeply unpopular change was unchanged, there might be room to reconsider the legislation. “If this is the only lever for us to have a bit of stability at some point, then at the very least, the debate must be allowed to take place,” she said.
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