After three crazy days, outgoing Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu appeared on French television to present the results of intense negotiations with various political forces at the request of President Emmanuel Macron. The goal was to find a way to form a new government and avoid the dissolution of the National Assembly at all costs.
By resigning as soon as his team was formed on the morning of Monday, October 6th, Lecornu had sent the President a very clear signal about the impossibility of governing given the inextricable situation created by the dissolution of the National Assembly in the summer of 2024. For several months, governments without a majority have followed, one after another, and multiplied their failures.
Despite this, President Macron, who is primarily responsible for the chaos thus created, stubbornly refuses to learn from his actions and give the French people a say—either by dissolving the National Assembly or by resigning personally.
In an attempt to find a solution that would allow him to avoid both of these paths, he has put pressure on his last prime minister to try to form a new government. Lecornu, interviewed on the public television channel France 2, believes that a solution does indeed exist. “There is an absolute majority in the National Assembly that refuses to dissolve,” he explained. “I feel that a way forward is possible,” he promised, suggesting that the appointment of a new prime minister should be possible “within the next 48 hours.” As far as he is concerned, he has already announced his refusal to take on the job again.
If there is to be an absolute majority against dissolution, it will come from an alliance between the centre and centre-right, between Macron’s party and Les Républicains. And for good reason: they have the most to lose from new elections. A considerable number of MPs from these two political families are almost certain to lose their seats in the event of new legislative elections.
Lecornu’s conclusions therefore suggest that an agreement has been reached with Les Républicains—one that is more satisfactory than the three ministries that the friends of Bruno Retailleau, the current minister of the interior, had to settle for when Lecornu’s government was announced on the evening of October 5th.
That is, unless an agreement has been reached with the Socialists for a centre-left government. But the latter have made the suspension of the highly controversial pension reform a condition, for which they say they have received “no assurance.”
Macron therefore refuses to dissolve parliament. The decision is approved by Yaël Braun-Pivet, president of the National Assembly, who believes that it would bring “the country to a complete standstill”—and incidentally, cause her to lose her job. But this is probably just a delay on the road towards the abyss. A government majority has certainly not appeared by miracle during these tedious discussions, and if a compromise is reached, it will be at the cost of immobility.
Marine Le Pen has already announced that she will censor “everything” that comes from the government. “The joke has gone on long enough,” she told the press in anger.
