France’s National Assembly has rejected two motions of no confidence—one from the far-left and another from the Rassemblement National—allowing Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu’s government to survive another day. The prospect of dissolution is receding—for now; but the scenario of dangerous stagnation until the 2027 presidential election is becoming a reality.
The negotiations undertaken by Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu under pressure from Emmanuel Macron have therefore borne fruit. By promising the Socialists that he would suspend the pension reform until after the presidential election and renegotiate it, he secured their support—despite the fact they had allied themselves with the far-left LFI in previous votes of no confidence.
Speakers took turns at the podium before the final vote. The first secretary of the Socialist Party justified his decision by arguing that the parliament elected in the summer of 2024, although lacking a majority, was “perfectly legitimate” and therefore did not deserve to be dissolved—forgetting that this “legitimacy” rests on electoral deals that denied the country’s largest party, the RN, with its 11 million voters, of a majority of seats. “We are going to achieve great things,” said Olivier Faure, congratulating himself on Lecornu’s decision to steer his policy towards the Left.
The call for censure from the Right, launched by Marine Le Pen and her ally from the Union des Droites pour la République (UDR), Éric Ciotti, fell on deaf ears. Ciotti reiterated his party’s motivation: to give the French people a voice against a government “that promises reform but only leads to confusion” and whose only driving force is “fear of the ballot box.” The RN ally then denounced the government’s shift to the Left, describing former Socialist president François Hollande, Macron’s political mentor, as “deputy prime minister.” Addressing the prime minister, he painted a bleak picture for the coming months, full of political concessions: “Today they are forcing you to back down on pensions. Tomorrow they will impose the Zucman tax, taxes, and regulations. Tomorrow, on your knees, you will give in to survive pitifully on taxes, debt, immigration, and security.”
The first motion of no confidence, put forward by the Left, failed by 18 votes. The second motion of no confidence, coming from the RN, received only 144 votes, as the Left refused to support it. In addition to the Socialists’ rallying behind Lecornu, the centre-right’s compromise with Macronism was therefore enough to prevent the French from returning to the polls. The Les Républicains party, in a fine example of political hypocrisy, had announced that it would not support the government, but did not want to contribute its votes to the vote of no confidence. Many LR MPs were simply absent during the vote.
The LR spokesman justified his party’s decision by explaining that “France’s interests come before party politics.” Behind the lofty words is a narrow focus on the budget vote, blinding the party to the need to return power to voters caught in political paralysis.
For Le Pen, it is now only a matter of time. The government has avoided dissolution for now, but the issue will return in a few weeks when its weakness becomes clear again, Le Pen told her opponents from the Left and Les Républicains.
You will not escape the French vote. You will have done everything, undertaken everything, sacrificed everything to avoid returning to the polls, but you will return to them, and you will have to face your voters with the dishonour of those who, for months, have been playing for time.
