Less than 24 hours after his proposed cabinet was revealed, French Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu has resigned, deepening the uncertainty in French politics, the BBC reports.
Lecornu said on the morning of the 6th of October that the conditions were not conducive for him to be prime minister. He also criticised the parties’ unwillingness to compromise.
It has been just 26 days since Lecornu was appointed after the fall of François Bayrou’s government.
The parties in the National Assembly have fiercely criticised the composition of Lecornu’s cabinet, which was virtually identical to Bayrou’s. Several parties are demanding elections, and others are calling for French President Emmanuel Macron to resign, but he has vowed to stay in office until his term ends in 2027. Far-right leader Marine Le Pen has said the only right thing to do now is to hold elections. She added that “this joke has gone on for too long” and that the French are fed up.
What happens next is entirely up to Macron.
He has three options: he can appoint a new prime minister, he can call elections or he can resign himself. The latter option is the least likely, while the former could be the natural choice. The question is – who can he call on to form a government? Lecornu was Macron’s last hope. Macron could nominate a socialist, so that this political group would have the opportunity to form a government, but it is clear that a socialist government would fall very quickly.
So the middle option remains – to hold elections. The result could be a blow to Macron’s centrist supporters and a landslide victory for Le Pen’s far-right.
Lecornu was the fifth prime minister in two years. In a brief speech on October 6, Lecornu criticized the political factions, all of whom were acting as if they had a majority. “I was ready for compromise but all parties wanted the other party to adopt their programmes in their entirety,” the now-former prime minister said.
French politics have been unstable since July 2024,
when Macron called snap elections in an attempt to regain a parliamentary majority at home after his party’s crushing defeat in the European elections. Instead, the elections produced a parliament made up of radically different parties that are unwilling to cooperate with each other. This makes it difficult for any prime minister to muster the necessary support.
The stumbling block of the Bayrou government has been plans to cut the budget sharply to reduce the country’s huge foreign debt. This is the third highest in the eurozone, right after Greece and Italy.
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