French President Emmanuel Macron will name a new prime minister within 48 hours, the Elysee Palace has said, fending off speculation that fresh elections could be imminent.
Earlier on Wednesday, outgoing Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu said the possibility of dissolving parliament was beginning to fade following talks with political parties over the last two days.
“There is a majority in parliament and that is the majority that is keen to avoid fresh elections,” he said.
On Monday, Lecornu – a close ally of Macron – became the third French PM to leave his job in less than a year, driven out by a hung parliament deeply divided along ideological lines.
He was then asked by Macron to stay on for two days to form a consensus among parties on how to get out of the current political crisis.
In a much-awaited TV interview on Wednesday evening, Lecornu gave no indication about who the next prime minister would be, and although he said his mission was “finished”, he also did not appear to rule himself out entirely.
He said that as well as not wanting fresh elections, most MPs also recognised the pressing need to pass a budget by the end of the year.
However, he recognised the path towards forming a government was still complicated due to the divisions within parliament and to politicians eyeing the next presidential election.
Whoever ends up in government “will need to be completely disconnected from any presidential ambition for 2027,” said Lecornu, a former armed forces minister.
France’s political stalemate began following snap elections in July 2024. Since then no one party has had a majority, making it difficult to pass any laws or reforms including the yearly budget.
The big challenge facing Lecornu and his two predecessors has been how to tackle France’s crippling national debt, which this year stood at €3.4tn (£2.9tn), or almost 114% of economic output (GDP), the third highest in the eurozone after Greece and Italy.
Previous prime ministers Michel Barnier and Francois Bayrou were ousted in confidence votes after they presented austerity budgets.
Lecornu said his own draft budget would be presented next week, although it would be “open for debate”.
“But the debate needs to begin… parties cannot say they’ll vote it down without examining it,” he added.
Similarly, Lecornu said, one big issue that has been plaguing French politics since 2023 will need to be revisited – Macron’s highly contested pension reforms. “We have to find a way for the debate to take place,” Lecornu said.
But some factions in parliament appear immovable from their positions.
Mathilde Panot of the radical left France Unbowed (LFI) said soon after Lecornu’s TV interview that the only solution was “the resignation and departure of Emmanuel Macron”.
Meanwhile, far right National Rally’s leader Marine Le Pen, who has long been calling for fresh elections, stated on Wednesday that she would vote down any new government.
It is unclear, at this stage, which political forces would support a new government.
The so-called common platform of centrists and Republicans that have run the government since last year appears to have fallen apart.
The big question now is whether over the last 48 hours Lecornu was able to persuade the Socialists, who were part of that left bloc during the elections, to prop up a government in some way.
Asked about the calls by some political factions for Macron to resign, with even Macron’s own former prime minister Edouard Philippe floating the idea earlier this week, Lecornu said France needed a stable, internationally recognised figure at its helm.
“This is not the time to change the president,” Lecornu said.
However, Macron is appearing increasingly isolated, with even close allies beginning to distance themselves from him.
Earlier this week Gabriel Attal, widely seen as Macron’s protégé, said he “no longer understood” Macron and called for the appointment of an independent negotiator to steer the government.
Macron has not yet spoken publicly since Lecornu’s shock resignation on Monday morning. Lecornu promised the president would “address the French people in due course,” without specifying when that may be.
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