Emmanuel Macron, faithful to his passion for playing with the clock and with the patience of his adversaries, had been setting deadlines for days and then failing to meet them. This Friday, after 10:00 p.m., when the French could no longer be more exhausted from the political vaudeville of recent weeks, having exceeded the last established limit, he once again appointed Sébastien Lecornu as prime minister. A re-election, just five days after his resignation, which reflects the blockade and lack of alternatives at a critical moment for France.
The advent, wrapped in a feeling of improvisation and scarcity of ideas, took place after an unusual meeting at the Elysée Palace with the heads of the political parties and the head of State, where each party experienced a different reality. Upon leaving, little by little, the majority of the Government began to decompose. Nobody believed they had been heard. Nobody wanted to be part of the new device anymore. The alarms began to ring in the Elysée, which was no longer clear about the name Macron had insisted on.
The idea of a Lecornu bis had been rejected by the parties. Even because of the president’s own formation, which spoke out against it in the morning. Why did he accept his resignation on Monday if he was going to be reappointed on Friday? he wondered. It was also considered a provocation, a symptom of the head of state’s allergy to giving up power. Lecornu’s previous Executive had lasted 836 minutes. But the head of state has ignored all the warnings and has decided to continue with the first idea he had. “I accept – out of duty – the mission entrusted to me by the President of the Republic: to do everything possible to give France a budget before the end of the year and respond to the problems of the daily life of our compatriots. It is necessary to put an end to this political crisis that exasperates the French and to this instability that is detrimental to the image of France and its interests,” the renowned prime minister published on his networks.
The sequence of the day has been chaotic. It began at two in the morning, when an email from the presidency of the Republic arrived to the political parties. Everyone, except France Insoumise and the National Rally, had to go to the Elysee Palace to meet with the French president, Emmanuel Macron. Emergency meeting. Improvised, given the times at which they received the email. “The feeling is one of pure chaos,” says a Macronist deputy.
The next day, after five in the afternoon, after two hours and 40 minutes of an unusual face-to-face meeting where the head of state listened to all parties, the only conclusion was Macron would name a prime minister in the next few hours. And it would be the same one he had named a month before. The question regarding the life expectancy of his predecessors, especially his own, was how long it would last.
The meeting at the Elysée focused on the reform of the pension law, the main demand of the left, Macron’s entourage confirmed to this newspaper. The head of state promised to postpone its application for one year: the age increase would come into force in January 2028, when Macron himself will no longer be in the Elysée. And that single concession also caused the majority of the government to crack.
Horizons, the party of former Prime Minister Édouard Philippe, announced that it would not be part of the future government. The Republicans did the same. The socialists conditioned their support for the program. At 9:30 p.m. everything was up in the air. But there was unanimity on one thing: nobody wanted Lecornu. Something that now enormously narrows the margin of negotiation and opens the door again to a new dissolution of the National Assembly and legislative elections.
Macron, however, believes that there is a possible way of working. And above all, that is what is surprising, it limits the political crisis experienced to the National Assembly, that is, to the parties. According to the head of state’s entourage, it was the fall of former Prime Minister François Bayrou that caused it. In no case is the dissolution of the National Assembly that Macron decided in June 2024 and that has already led to four different prime ministers in just over a year.
The exceptional call this Friday at the Elysée was also a reflection of the seriousness of the moment and the delicate situation that the country is going through. Also of the improvisation, chaos and podlitic decadence that reigns in the decisions made by the head of state, who decided on this meeting in the middle of the night. More and more alone.
Macron, his entourage assures, “thought that everything possible had to be done to avoid a new dissolution.” “Given the serious international situation and domestic emergencies such as the approval of a budget. But also the delicate situation in New Caledonia.” On that basis, Macron asked three questions to the parties gathered at the Elysée. Do you want dissolution? Can you work on the background of the topics? Are you willing to make agreements? And on the latter, the same sources point out, formations such as the Socialist Party agreed.
The reality is that there is no longer a government majority. Just a group of parties, bewildered and with their sights set on the 2027 presidential elections that will condition their support for the new executive to come out as untainted as possible.
The new common space, as was already known, does not include the RN and LFI, which have already expressed their desire for legislative elections to be called or for the president to resign. Marine Le Pen, with 33% support in the polls, calmly walked through a firefighters’ congress on Friday. “It is an honor that he has not called us. We have the meeting with the people,” he posted on his networks. The far-right, given the spectacle of the last few hours, just has to wait until, one way or another, everything goes off the rails again.
Lecornu, the most short-lived minister of the Fifth Republic, assured in a televised interview last Wednesday that he did not aspire to regain his position. Also that his mission was over. But he added that he is “a soldier,” and that he would do what was entrusted to him. And that is exactly what has been required of him, to return and try to save the furniture of the Fifth Republic.
