Emmanuel Macron has summoned the leaders of several political parties to his office to demand they show “collective responsibility” as he attempts to appoint a new prime minister amid a deepening political crisis.
All political parties except Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally, which is the biggest single opposition party, and Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s leftwing La France Insoumise were called to the meeting at the presidential palace before Macron’s self-imposed deadline to name a new prime minister by Friday night.
Parties including the Socialists, Greens and Les Républicains received the invitation at 2am in a sign of the frantic effort to resolve a seemingly intractable political crisis.
Jordan Bardella, the president of the National Rally, which had refused to back any new government, said his party was “honoured” not to have been invited, adding: “Our party is not for sale.” Mélenchon said only Macron’s resignation as president and an early presidential election would bring stability to France. Macron’s office has repeatedly said he will not resign before his second term ends in spring 2027.
The centrist Macron is facing the worst domestic crisis since he first won the presidency in 2017. On Monday, the prime minister, Sébastien Lecornu, a Macron ally, resigned only 14 hours after appointing a new government, amid fierce criticism from opposition parties that he was refusing to broaden the government to different political groups and viewpoints that reflected parliament.
Lecornu quit before he had attended his first cabinet meeting or made his first policy speech to parliament. Weeks earlier, his predecessor François Bayrou was ousted over his proposed budget cuts.
Lecornu was the third French prime minister in a year as the country lurched from one political crisis to another after Macron’s gamble on an inconclusive snap election last year. The parliament remains divided into three blocs: the left, the far right and the centre, none of which has a clear majority. A budget for next year must be agreed within the coming weeks, even though the political parties are at loggerheads and there has been no stable government for weeks.
Macron is searching for his sixth prime minister in less than two years and will need to find a figure who can find some kind of compromise or non-aggression pact between very different political parties in order to steer a budget through a fractured parliament.
Lecornu has said a revised draft budget for 2026 could be presented at a cabinet meeting on Monday, the deadline for the bill to pass parliament by the end of the year. Macron has promised to announce a new prime minister by Friday night, but that nominee would then have to form a new government by the end of the weekend in order to meet early budget deadlines.
France’s central bank chief, François Villeroy de Galhau, forecast that the political uncertainty would have an impact on business and consumer confidence and economic growth. “Uncertainty is … the No 1 enemy of growth,” he told RTL radio.
Under the French political system, the president, who is head of state and has authority on foreign policy and national security, directly appoints a prime minister as head of government to run domestic affairs.
