Beleaguered President Emmanuel Macron has appointed outgoing defense minister Sébastien Lecornu as prime minister, handing him the daunting task of trying to find consensus in a divided parliament and pass the 2026 budget. Earlier on Monday, outgoing Prime Minister François Bayrou submitted his resignation, which Macron accepted. He was forced out after just nine months in office, undone by his failure to deliver a central promise: pushing through an unpopular plan to tame France's ballooning deficit. Before the confidence vote, Bayrou warned lawmakers that ousting him would not resolve the country's problems. "You have the power to bring down the government, but you do not have the power to erase reality," he said. "Reality will remain relentless: expenses will continue to rise, and the burden of debt, already unbearable, will grow heavier and more costly." Lecornu now faces the dual challenge of steering France out of its financial morass while leading a government braced for mass protests. Nationwide demonstrations and highway blockades are set for Wednesday, followed by a broader union led strike on September 18. The French presidency said Macron has tasked Lecornu "with consulting the political forces represented in Parliament with a view to adopting a budget for the nation and building the agreements essential to the decisions that will be taken in the coming months." The chaos can be traced back to Macron's dramatic decision to call a snap poll last year. Piqued by the remarkable successes of the far-right party, the National Rally (RN), in the European elections in June 2024, the president rolled the dice on a parliamentary vote. The gamble backfired and his centrist bloc lost seats to the far right and far left, leaving France with a divided National Assembly and effectively ungovernable. But it didn't have to be this way. France's Fifth Republic, founded by President Charles de Gaulle in 1958, was designed to end the chronic instability that had plagued the Third and Fourth Republics earlier in the 20th century. The new constitution gave broad powers to the executive and set up a majority system to avoid short-lived governments. As a result, for decades, two mainstream political parties on the left and right alternated in power. Macron blew up that order in 2017, by becoming the first president elected without the backing of either of the main established parties. Re-elected in 2022, he soon lost his parliamentary majority as voters flocked to the extremes. Two years of fragile rule followed, with Macron repeatedly forced to invoke Article 49.3 of the constitution – pushing legislation through without a vote, to the increasing displeasure of opposition lawmakers and much of the French public. In the 2024 snap election, the left won the most seats in the second round of voting but still fell short of a majority after the far right dominated the first. But the left's hopes of forming a minority government collapsed when Macron refused to accept their choice of prime minister. Unlike Germany or Italy, France has no tradition of coalition building, instead its politics have been shaped for more than 60 years by a presidency-dominated system. By choosing a premier from his own ranks, Macron risks sounding tone-deaf, a sign that he has yet to fully accept the reality of his snap election defeat. Lecornu, 39, is regarded as a political survivor, the only minister to have served continuously since Macron first took office in 2017. The logic behind his appointment is that Lecornu might be able to strike a deal with the Socialists to make the budget more palatable – the same compromise that Bayrou used to push through this year's budget with concessions to the left. Yet that path now looks highly unlikely. The Socialists want to tax the rich and roll back Macron's tax cuts for businesses, demands that are anathema to the right. As a centrist, Bayrou barely managed to walk that tightrope. Lecornu, positioned further to the right, may not be as agile. One potential saving grace is that neither the left nor the right wants the snap election that far-right figurehead Marine Le Pen is pushing for, since both political wings would risk losing seats. This gives them an incentive to cooperate with Macron's government, but not at any price. Away from politics, wider economic turmoil has rattled French investors. Yields on French government bonds – or the interest rate demanded by investors – have risen above those of Spanish, Portuguese and Greek bonds, which were once at the heart of the eurozone debt crisis. A possible downgrade of France's sovereign debt rating review Friday would deliver another blow to the country's economic standing in Europe. Following these turbulent years, the political climate is also bleak. In the event of another snap parliamentary election, a recent Elabe poll suggests that the far-right RN would emerge on top, with the left coming in second and Macron's centrist bloc a distant third. Many in France now assume the far right will eventually take power – if not now, then after the 2027 presidential election – though few believe such an outcome would solve the country's challenges. Public trust in the political class has collapsed and anger is set to spill onto the streets. The far left has called for nationwide protests on Wednesday against austerity, under the banner "Bloquons tout" (Let's block everything), and has vowed to paralyze the country with roadblocks and civil disobedience. The outgoing interior minister has warned of "intense disruptions." Trade unions are planning another wave of mobilization on September 18 with strikes expected in hospitals and across rail services. Dominique Moïsi, a senior analyst at the Paris-based think tank Institut Montaigne, said he cannot recall a moment of such profound deadlock in the Fifth Republic. "De Gaulle survived assassination attempts, there was the Algerian war, in May '68 the slogan was 'La France s'ennuie,' (France is bored). But today France is frustrated, furious, full of hatred towards the elite," he told CNN. "It sounds as if a regime change is inevitable, yet I can't see how it will come about and who would do the job. We are in a phase of transition between a system that no longer works and a system no one can imagine." - CNN
