France's new Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu, who was previously the defence minister, is a close ally of the French President, Emmanuel Macron. Photo / Getty Images
Emmanuel Macron’s swift appointment of Sebastien Lecornu as prime minister, reflects the immense pressure the French President faces.
He is struggling to control France’s political turmoil and to get a crucial Budget passed by the end of the year to rein in the country’s ballooning debt.
The choice of Lecornu — a key supporter of Macron who is the only minister to have been in every Cabinet since 2017 — was one of comfort for the French President.
Lecornu was the departing Defence Minister and a loyal ally, being asked to step up a little over 24 hours after the country’s government collapsed on a no-confidence vote and Francois Bayrou was forced to resign.
The move suggested that Macron wanted to avoid a vacancy of power at the highest levels of government before today’s street protests, aimed against him and proposed austerity measures.
Lecornu, 39, a centrist whose political career originated on the right, is now the fifth prime minister of Macron’s second term, which started in 2022.
He is also the third since the snap parliamentary elections that Macron called last year.
The abrupt shifts represent a level of persistent instability that is unheard-of in France’s modern-day Fifth Republic.
Macron bucked speculation that he might appoint a prime minister outside his own political camp.
In doing so, his opponents say, he risked angering an electorate that has soured on him after eight years in power and is increasingly disillusioned with the country’s politics.
“He is running the risk of legitimate social unrest and institutional gridlock in the country,” the Socialist Party said in a statement.
Still, Macron’s office said that he had asked Lecornu to consult the political forces represented in Parliament “in view of adopting a Budget for the nation and building the agreements essential for decisions in the coming months” — suggesting that he was open to deals with other political forces.
After those discussions, Lecornu will be asked to propose members of the new Cabinet, the statement added.
In France, the prime minister suggests Cabinet ministers and the president appoints them.
Lecornu said on social media that Macron had given him a clear agenda: “The defence of our independence and of our power, service to the French people, and political and institutional stability for the unity of the country”.
The presidency is, in many ways, France’s most powerful political office. Prime Ministers and their Cabinets, who answer to the National Assembly, are formally in charge of domestic policy, including the Budget, and they run the country on a day-to-day basis.
Stability has been elusive in France since the snap elections last year, which left the lower house of Parliament deadlocked among a collection of left-wing parties, a tenuous centre-right coalition and a nationalist, anti-immigrant far right.
Bayrou, another centrist ally of Macron’s who had become prime minister just nine months ago, failed a confidence vote that he had hoped would jolt the country into understanding the gravity of the country’s financial woes and the necessity of at least US$51 billion in cost cutting.
Bayrou’s predecessor, who lasted only three months, was ejected over a Budget vote as well.
Whether Lecornu will fare better is an open question.
He is described in profiles in the French news media as discreet and adept at political manoeuvring, but the political equation in the lower house remains the same.
Mainstream conservatives welcomed Lecornu’s appointment. Opponents on the left reacted furiously, calling it a “provocation”. Many of them still fume that Macron did not pick one of their own as prime minister after they came out ahead in seat numbers after last year’s snap election.
Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the longtime leader of the far-left party France Unbowed said on social media that “only the departure of Macron himself can put an end to this sad comedy of contempt for Parliament, voters and political decency”.
Lecornu, originally a member of the Republicans, France’s mainstream conservative party, defected to Macron’s party in 2017, at the start of the French President’s first term.
He has held several electoral offices in Normandy and is one of the President’s closest and most loyal allies.
As Defence Minister since 2022, he was a vocal defender of Macron’s vision of a sovereign and more autonomous Europe, one that can no longer count on the United States and that must increase its military spending.
Jordan Bardella, president of the nationalist, anti-immigrant party National Rally, said it would not move to topple Lecornu immediately and would judge him on his merits.
That gives the new prime minister a bit of a reprieve, as only the joined votes of the left and the far right would be enough to oust him.
But Bardella mocked Macron’s choice as out of touch. The National Rally has been pushing Macron to call new parliamentary elections, but the French President has ruled that out so far.
“Emmanuel Macron’s motto: you don’t change a losing team,” Bardella wrote on social media. “How could a loyal supporter of the President break with the policy he has been pursuing for eight years?”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Written by: Aurelien Breeden
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