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France The latest political crisis erupted this week when Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu unexpectedly announced resign On Monday, will be reassigned till Friday only.
Lecornu’s initial decision to step down set the tone for another chaotic week in France PoliticsHe resigned less than four weeks after taking office and only 14 hours after unveiling his minority government.
But within days he was back on the job, reappointed by President Emmanuel Macron and tasked with forming a new cabinet and presenting a budget the following week.
Lecornu said in a statement that he had accepted the new job offer out of “duty” and that he had been given the mission to “deliver a budget to France by the end of the year and do everything to respond to the daily problems of our compatriots.”
His 27 days in office were shorter than Liz Truss’s disastrous tenure at No. 10 and made her the shortest-serving prime minister in modern French history.
So how did France get to this point and what happens now?
France’s political crisis came amid economic crisis
The political impasse stems from Macron’s shock decision to dissolve the National Assembly in June 2024. Snap elections produced a hung parliament, with no one able to win a majority in the 577-seat house.
The standoff has discouraged investors, angered voters and hampered efforts to curb France’s growing deficit and public debt.
Without stable support, Macron’s governments have lurched from one crisis to another and collapsed after seeking support for unpopular spending cuts.
At the end of the first quarter of 2025, France’s public debt stood at €3.346 trillion (£2.91 trillion) or 114 per cent of GDP.
France’s poverty rate is also projected to reach 15.4 percent in 2023, its highest level since records began in 1996, according to the latest data available from the National Institute of Statistics.
One of Macron’s key policies is the extremely unpopular pension reform. After passing parliament without a vote in 2023 despite massive opposition, it will gradually raise the retirement age from 62 to 64.
Why did Lecornu leave?
Government formation remains a difficult challenge amidst the insistence of rapidly increasing polarization. National Assembly,
Lecornu, a close associate of the President long sign on english vowelHad tried to repair the rift through diplomacy, met with political opponents and promised to “break” from old patterns.
Promises of change offered little concrete reassurance. Lecornu’s new government was largely similar to the old government, and this time the decision to retain Bruno Le Maire as Defense Minister angered people on both the left and the right.
Opposition parties threatened to bring a no-confidence motion before Lecornu backed down.
What has been the reaction?
Macron’s decision to reappoint Lecornu has angered some of his staunchest opponents, who have argued that the only way out of France’s worst political crisis in decades is for the president to call new legislative elections or resign.
Allies have also now become attackers on Macron. former prime minister gabriel atalThe man who leads Macron’s Renaissance party said on Monday he “no longer understands” the president’s decisions. Another former prime minister, Edouard Philippe, one of Macron’s most important allies, called on the president to resign and call new presidential elections.
Lecornu’s resignation also spooked the market. By 8 am the same day, the Paris Stock Exchange had fallen by two percent. The euro fell 0.6 percent against the dollar.
The Elysee Palace dismissed speculation that France was heading for new elections when it said on Wednesday that Macron would name a new prime minister within 48 hours. Instead, he reappointed Lecornu.
Will Macron finally resign?
Macron’s choices at the beginning of the week were either to appoint a new prime minister, resign himself or dissolve parliament and call new parliamentary elections.
Emile Chabal, an expert in contemporary French politics at the University of Edinburgh, said Independent Resigning would be the “nuclear option” and would lead to an “extraordinary and destabilizing realignment of various political groups.”
Elections are also not a safe bet. There is no guarantee that the new parliament will be more stable than the previous one and that it could invite a far-right majority.
Last summer, Macron surprised his allies when he dissolved the National Assembly in response to his coalition’s landslide defeat in the EU elections. The New Popular Front coalition, a leftist coalition, came out on top, with Macron’s centrist alliance in second and the far-right National Rally (RN) in third. No party got majority.
With fringes on both the left and the right re-assessing their chances in the race, Macron sought to call another election as soon as Lecornu’s resignation was made public.
French politics is now ‘a tragicomedy’
Dr. Pierre Persigal, Reader in Modern European History at the University of Warwick, described the situation as “another extraordinary installment in the tragic decline of French politics over the past year and a half.”
The longer this goes on, the longer France will remain in limbo without fixing its growing financial crisis. This can only harm Macron’s reputation, and voters are already indifferent.
“The majority of voters remain energized by Macron, his government, and indeed the desire to drive most politicians out of office,” Dr. Persigal said.
Even ousting Macron is no guarantee of fixing the inertia. “The elections could push France deeper into the paralyzing quagmire it has been in for more than a year,” Dr. Persigal said. “Meanwhile, none of the serious economic, social and international challenges facing the country will be addressed as they surely must be.”