French President Emmanuel Macron announced a new Cabinet Sunday as pressure builds for him and his reappointed prime minister, Sebastien Lecornu, to head off the country's growing political crisis and pass a budget.
Lecornu, who resigned as premier a week ago before being renamed Friday, will need to tamp down defections from the political groups that propped up Macron’s centrist alliance to avoid another government collapse. The cabinet will meet for the first time Tuesday, which is when the prime minister is expected to propose the budget.
Macron’s declining approval has left his coalition with a weak minority in France’s parliament, putting Lecornu at risk of losing his job yet again. Opposition and allied parties alike have expressed anger at Macron for failing to accept his tenuous position and retract his more maximalist policies.
Lecornu wrote on social media after the announcement that he will try to pass a budget before the end of the year. Earlier in the weekend, he told reporters: "Either the political forces help me and we work together to make it happen, or they don’t.”
The new government must strike a delicate balance between bickering opposition parties if it is to survive no-confidence votes to come later this week at the National Assembly. With the far right and far left vowing to support motions to topple Lecornu whatever policies he proposes, the premier needs to convince both the Socialists and the Republicans to abstain in the coming votes.
The National Rally’s Marine Le Pen said in a social media post that her party would file a no-confidence motion on Monday and again called on Macron to dissolve parliament.
Olivier Faure, the Socialist leader, said in La Tribune Dimanche over the weekend that the most likely scenario was that Lecornu’s latest efforts would fail. Both of the premier’s predecessors — Michel Barnier and Francois Bayrou — were forced to resign following no-confidence votes related to the budget.
The Socialist Party is demanding wholesale reversals of Macron’s economic agenda, including suspending a controversial pension reform that raised the retirement age, hiking taxes on the wealthy and allowing more deficit spending. Centrists and the center right oppose such radical steps, although it is not clear whether they would go as far as to vote against the government.
Another government collapse would likely spark more sell-offs on French markets. The spread between the 10-year yield of French and German bonds — a key gauge of risk — has already risen to more than 80 basis points from as low as 65 in August and 43 before Macron called the snap elections last year that fractured parliament into acrimonious minority blocs.
Macron will travel to Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt, on Monday to attend the signing ceremony of the peace plan for Gaza.
Macron and Lecornu chose to reappoint several key ministers, including Roland Lescure as finance minister, Amelie de Montchalin as budget minister and Jean-Noel Barrot as foreign affairs minister. However, Laurent Nunez replaced Bruno Retailleau at the interior ministry after the latter led a pushback against Lecornu’s last attempt to form a government.
Retailleau’s party, the Republicans, said in a statement that the ministers who remained in Lecornu’s second government will no longer be part of the party.
Macron’s office said the new cabinet had eight people from civil society, including the former chief of rail company SNCF, Jean-Pierre Farandou, as labor minister.
Lecornu earlier warned that failure to adopt a budget would push the deficit to around 6% of economic output in 2026, from an expected 5.4% this year.
For the budget bill, the premier must compromise with demands for less belt-tightening from the lawmakers he depends on to remain in power. Socialists voted to topple former premier Francois Bayrou over his plan to narrow the deficit to 4.6% of economic output next year, while Lecornu has warned France’s credibility with markets is at stake and the target must not be wider than 5%.
Faure, the Socialist leader, said on Sunday ahead of the cabinet announcement that the political maneuvering was "a form of political madness.” But he repeated what his party needed so it wouldn’t vote to topple Lecornu’s government.
"I am obviously ready not to censure a prime minister who would agree, first, to roll back the pension reform, and then to govern without” bypassing parliament to pass a budget, he said on BFM TV.
With your current subscription plan you can comment on stories. However, before writing your first comment, please create a display name in the Profile section of your subscriber account page.