Forward kick. That is what the president of France has done, Emmanuel Macronthis Friday night given the impossibility of finding a new prime minister after the resignation, last Monday, of Sébastien Lecornu. Instead of assuming one of the two alternatives left vacant – parliamentary elections or presidential elections – the French leader has decided to appoint… Lecornu. Again.
It is worth remembering that the former Minister of the Armed Forces came to office for the first time on September 9 with the mission of preparing a state budget capable of combining three aspects. Namely: the demands for social justice presented by the French social democracy, the aversion to tax increases characteristic of classical conservatism and reformist and pro-business agenda from Macron himself.
Lecornu was trying for four weeks, until at the beginning of October he announced that he was resigning. Two days later, on Wednesday night, he informed the country of his reasons: he had failed in the effort despite “having tried everything.” He then added that no one within the establishment French politician seemed to be in the mood to give in and that there was no way. Shortly afterwards Macron promised to name a new prime minister –the fourth in twelve months– before the weekend.
It turns out that he has not found a candidate and has had to ask Lecornu to return. “I accept – out of duty – the mission,” the politician declared after agreeing with Macron to return to office. The latter, for his part, has promised to give Lecornu “carte blanche” to agree on and sign a budget before the end of the year.
Such a scenario, say analysts who closely follow French politics, deepens the crisis even further in which the Fifth Republic is currently located. The most serious, they add, since its foundation in October 1958 under the direction of Charles de Gaulle.
“This unprecedented situation has revived the specter of the feared Fourth Republic,” Sylvie Kauffmann, the former director of the newspaper, wrote this Friday. The World, in allusion to the political system that governed France between 1946 and 1958… and that almost ended in a civil conflict spurred by the Algerian War. “In those years, rival political parties, unable to cooperate, paralyzed successive French governments until Charles de Gaulle took power and established a new constitutional regime,” adds Kauffmann.
The question that many are asking today in France is: Who is the main culprit in the situation? As expected, there are many responses that point directly to Macron.
“The current chaos originated in Macron’s hasty, unilateral decision to dissolve the National Assembly and call early elections on June 9, 2024 in order to stop the rise of the extreme right,” explains Kauffmann. “By failing to achieve a parliamentary majority, those elections generated permanent instability while strengthening both the extreme right and the extreme left.” And there was a clear loser: the centrist bloc. That is to say: the presidential side.
Despite the result of those elections, Macron decided that he could move forward and hold out until the end of his second term, in 2027, trying to protect his reformist legacy in the process.
However, experts say, the rest of French political figures are also partly to blame. And the leaders of all the other political parties –they explain– They have stubbornly refused to collaborate, or at least to propose agreements, despite the serious fiscal situation in France – it has a huge problem derived from its pension system – and despite the volatility prevailing in the international environment.
In fact, Lecornu himself has blamed his colleagues for having been “incapable of putting country before party” and for being obsessed with the 2027 presidential elections.
On the other hand, and given the weight it has in the European Union, the crisis in France also greatly affects the countries of the old continent. And, beyond being the second economy in the eurozone (the first is Germany) and a G-7 country, France is also a nuclear power and one of the main foreign actors in the war in Ukraine.
“It is a country that has once again gained prominence in the world at a time when the United States is withdrawing and there are existential and important questions about the future of Gaza and the future of Ukraine,” says Mujtaba Rahman; chief European analyst at the geopolitical consultancy Eurasia Group. “So the outcome of this crisis transcends its own borders and will have crucial implications for the rest of the world.”