Emmanuel Macron will name a new prime minister by Friday evening, his office has said, hinting at the president’s hopes that a sixth prime minister in less than two years will manage to steer a budget through France’s deeply fragmented parliament.
“This might be the last chance,” the government spokesperson Aurore Bergé told RTL radio on Thursday. “I believe this is the last chance for politicians to regain credibility ... all of this is only strengthening the chances and capabilities of the far right to take power.”
The country’s longstanding political crisis deepened this week when 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.
Soon after, Macron asked Lecornu to stay on for two more days to hold last-ditch talks aimed at charting a way out of the spiralling crisis that has gripped the EU’s second-largest economy.
After spending hours speaking to parties across the political spectrum – except 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 the public broadcaster France 2 on Wednesday.
“There’s a majority that can govern,” Lecornu said. “I feel that a path is still possible.” 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.
Lecornu on Wednesday hinted at the impact of the 2027 elections, noting that any new government would have to be “completely disconnected” from any presidential ambitions. “The situation is already difficult enough. We need a team that decides to roll up its sleeves and solve the country’s problems until the presidential election,” he said.
In recent days, comments from leaders on the far right and hard left have reinforced the scope of the challenge that lies ahead. On Wednesday, the leader of the far-right National Rally, 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 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 Macron having 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 Lecornu this week, the leader of the Greens, Marine Tondelier, whose party is allied with the Socialists, said 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.
Doing so, however, would prove unpopular with the centre-right, hinting at the complicated arithmetic Macron will have to do in the coming hours.
The political turmoil has come at a cost to the already beleaguered president, as key allies appeared to distance themselves from him, including two former prime ministers, Édouard Philippe and Gabriel Attal, with the former saying Macron should call an early presidential election once a new budget was adopted.
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 said he has no intention of resigning before the end of his mandate in 2027.
