French president Emmanuel Macron has reappointed Sébastien Lecornu only four days after he stood down from the post, sparking a week of political turmoil
Mr Macron made the announcement late on Friday, hours after meeting all the main parties together, except the leaders of the far right and far left.
It is not certain that Mr Lecornu will be able to form a government and he faces a deadline of next Monday to put next year’s budget before parliament.
Earlier, it emerged Mr Macron was considering delaying pension reforms in a bid to win support for reappointing Mr Lecornu.
READ MORE
France has been gripped by political deadlock since Mr Macron called snap parliamentary elections in the summer of 2024 and his centrist alliance lost its majority in the National Assembly.
The president has since appointed and lost three prime ministers after they struggled to persuade fractious parties to support efforts to cut France’s deficit, which is set to hit 5.4 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP) this year.
To resolve the crisis, some of Mr Macron’s political foes have said he should either call fresh legislative elections or resign, measures he has so far sought to avoid.
After leaving a meeting on Friday with the president, leftist party chiefs said Mr Macron had said he did not plan to name a leftist prime minister. They believe such a position is their right after the president’s previous centrist picks were toppled by legislators unwilling to stomach proposed budget cuts.
They said Mr Macron offered to delay the application of his contentious pension reform until after the 2027 presidential election – a proposal they said didn’t go far enough. “We’re not looking for a dissolution of parliament, but we’re not scared of it either,” Socialist party chief Olivier Faure told reporters after the meeting, which did not include the far-right National Rally (RN) and hard-left France Unbowed (LFI) – two of the largest parties in the National Assembly.
Centrist and centre-right party chiefs did not comment to reporters after leaving the meeting. A source close to Mr Macron said the meeting had shown it remains possible to find a compromise that will resolve the crisis and avoid a dissolution of parliament. The source confirmed Mr Macron’s offer to delay some of the pension reform effects by a year.
and whether they can survive in the post long enough to pass a 2026 budget, due by year’s end.
The daily Le Parisien newspaper reported earlier on Friday that Mr Macron intended to reappoint Mr Lecornu, who resigned as prime minister on Monday after just 27 days in the post.
Mr Lecornu did not attend the meeting at the Élysée Palace, which did not respond to a request for comment about his potential reappointment.
Other names that had been floated in political circles included veteran centrist Jean-Louis Borloo, the head of the public auditor Pierre Moscovici, and Nicolas Revel, a technocrat who leads the Paris hospitals administration.
Reappointing Mr Lecornu riskd alienating the political leaders whose backing Mr Macron needs to form a broad-based government that can get a budget over the line, and could force him into calling a snap election.
France’s mainstream parties are keen to avoid a snap election. Opinion polls suggest the RN would be the main beneficiary and that another hung parliament would be the most likely result.
The central bank chief, Francois Villeroy de Galhau, on Friday forecast the crisis would cost the economy 0.2 percentage points of GDP growth. 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. He 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 European Union’s cap.
Mr Macron’s second-to-last prime minister, Francois Bayrou, was ousted by the National Assembly over his plans for €44 billion in savings to bring the deficit down to 4.6 per cent.
Rating agencies issued a fresh round of warnings about France’s sovereign credit score this week after Mr Lecornu said on Monday his government was resigning, just 14 hours after he had announced his cabinet line-up. - Reuters
