French President Emmanuel Macron on Friday named Sebastien Lecornu as Prime Minister, reappointing him after he quit the job four days before, hoping the loyalist can draw enough support from divided parliament to pass a 2026 budget.
In naming Mr Lecornu, Mr Macron risks the wrath of his political rivals, who have argued that the best way out of the country's deepest political crisis in decades was for Mr Macron to either hold snap parliamentary elections or resign.
“I accept – out of duty – the mission entrusted to me by the President of the Republic to do everything possible to provide France with a budget by the end of the year and to address the daily life issues of our fellow citizens,” Mr Lecornu wrote on X.
“We must put an end to this political crisis that exasperates the French people and to this instability that is harmful to France's image and its interests.”
The President had convened a meeting of France's mainstream political parties before a self-imposed deadline to name a replacement, as the country's central bank chief said political turmoil was sapping economic growth.
“We have no response to our concerns,” said the head of the Socialist party, Olivier Faure. “There is no guarantee we will not vote down the next government.”
Mr Macron, 47, needs a figure whose appeal spans the centre-right to centre-left, to steer the budget for 2026 through a fragmented and fractious parliament.
Before Friday's meeting, the President's Elysee office said the gathering needed to be a “moment of collective responsibility,” which political pundits quickly interpreted as a signal that Mr Macron could call snap elections if no consensus candidate was found. Opinion polls show that the President has never been so unpopular and participants said Mr Macron was determined to appoint another caretaker.
Mr Macron's main political rival, far-right leader Marine Le Pen, spent the afternoon at a firefighter's conference and posted a video of herself taking selfies with the caption: “Our appointment is with the French people.”
The far-right and hard-left parties were not invited to the afternoon meeting at the Elysee. Both have been lobbying hard for snap elections, although Ms Le Pen is ineligible for five years after being found guilty for embezzling public funds.
She was among the harshest critics of Mr Macron on Friday, describing mainstream political parties as desperately trying to avoid elections – which opinion polls show the far-right would probably win.
The left is also losing patience with Mr Macron. “The more he is alone, the more rigid he becomes,” said Greens Party leader Marine Tondelier said. “This will end in a dissolution” of the National Assembly, she added, which would trigger snap elections.
Other names that had been floated in political circles include veteran centrist Jean-Louis Borloo, the head of the public auditor Pierre Moscovici, and Nicolas Revel, a technocrat who leads the Paris hospitals administration.
Budget wrangling
Reappointing Mr Lecornu risks alienating the political leaders whose backing Mr Macron needs to form a broad-based government that can get a budget over the line. Mr Lecornu himself said on national television this week that his “mission was over” and that he would not seek reappointment.
Wrangling over a budget that can both rein in the country's deficit while meeting the conflicting demands of both the left and conservatives has been going on for weeks, with Socialist demands for a repeal of a 2023 pensions reform and for heavier taxation of the rich proving big stumbling blocks.
Gabriel Attal, a former Macron prime minister and head of the President's Renaissance party, warned the President against unilaterally naming the next prime minister without wider support.
“I fear that trying the same method … of naming a prime minister before there has been a compromise will produce the same effects,” Mr Attal said told France 2.
Snap election option
France's mainstream parties are keen to avoid a snap parliamentary election. Opinion polls forecast the far-right would be the main beneficiary and that another hung parliament dominated by three ideologically opposed blocs would be the most likely result.
The crisis is the deepest that France, the eurozone's second-largest economy, has seen in decades. The turmoil was precipitated in part by the President's failed gamble on a snap election last year that further weakened his minority in parliament.
The central bank chief, Francois Villeroy de Galhau, forecast the political uncertainty would cost the economy 0.2 percentage points of gross domestic product. Business sentiment was suffering but the economy was broadly fine, he said. “Uncertainty is … the number one enemy of growth,” Mr Villeroy told RTL radio.
Mr Villeroy said it would be preferable if the deficit did not exceed 4.8 per cent of GDP in 2026. The deficit is forecast to hit 5.4 per cent this year, nearly double the EU's cap.
Mr Macron's second-to-last prime minister, Francois Bayrou, was ousted by the National Assembly over his plans for €44 billion ($51 billion) in spending cuts to reduce the deficit by 4.6 per cent.
Rating agencies issued new warnings about France's sovereign credit score this week after Mr Lecornu said on Monday that his government was resigning, only 14 hours after he had announced his cabinet line-up.
