France’s President Emmanuel Macron has reappointed Sebastien Lecornu as prime minister, days after he stepped down from the same post.
Lecornu, 39, whose resignation was accepted on Monday just weeks after he took office, is now tasked with forming a new cabinet, Macron’s office said in a statement on Friday.
His return is a surprise move after the president and political parties held days of negotiations aimed at ending a political impasse in the country.
“I accept – out of duty – the mission entrusted to me by the President of the Republic to do everything possible to provide France with a budget by the end of the year and to address the daily life issues of our fellow citizens,” Lecornu wrote on X.
“We must put an end to this political crisis that exasperates the French people and to this instability that is harmful to France’s image and its interests.”
Speaking shortly after the appointment was announced, Al Jazeera’s Natacha Butler, reporting from Paris, said that “everything has been so unpredictable that nobody knew what to expect”.
“This is just the latest twist in what has been a dramatic week in French politics.”
Macron had met with leaders of all political parties apart from the far-right National Rally (RN) and the far-left France Unbowed party earlier on Friday at the presidential palace, informed sources told the AFP news agency.
Shortly before the meeting, the presidency in a statement called on all parties to recognise the “moment of collective responsibility”, appearing to imply that Macron could dissolve the French Parliament if they did not rally behind his preferred candidate.
Lecornu’s reappointment demonstrates that “clearly Macron has run out of options”, said Butler.
Following the meeting, “we heard party leaders … saying that they felt Emmanuel Macron was disconnected from what they wanted to put across on the agenda, that he didn’t understand their concerns and they felt ignored, as if the meetings had made the situation even worse,” Al Jazeera’s correspondent added.
First appointed a month ago, Lecornu had come under increasing pressure in recent weeks as he struggled to pass a budget through the fractured French Parliament amid a debt crisis.
Lecornu now faces several challenges, said Butler, as he must form another government and deliver the budget for 2026 by Monday, in line with the French constitution so that it can be voted on by a “deeply fragmented” Parliament before the end of the year.
The difficulty in forming a government lies in the fact that many politicians, even ones on the right of the political spectrum who previously approved of Macron, now “don’t want to be part of his [Lecornu’s] government,” said Butler.
“So it will be difficult for Lecornu as he will have a small pool from which to choose.”
Lecornu resigned on Sunday after his suggested list of ministers to form a government sparked criticism from both the right and left for containing too many of the same faces from the previous administration of former Prime Minister Francois Bayrou.
A ‘disconnected’ Macron
In naming Lecornu, Macron, 47, risks the wrath of his political rivals, who have argued that the best way out of the country’s deepest political crisis in decades was for Macron to either hold snap parliamentary elections or resign.
Politicians from across France’s political spectrum were united in condemning Lecornu’s reappointment.
The RN vowed to immediately seek to bring down the new French government led by Lecornu, saying it did not have “any future”.
Labelling the move by an “isolated and disconnected” Macron to reappoint Lecornu a “bad joke”, RN leader Jordan Bardella said his party will “immediately of course censure this coalition which does not have any future” through a no-confidence motion in Parliament.
Francois Kalfon, a member of the Socialist Party, said: “Our scepticism grows by the day. We want something concrete on the pension reform. We are not afraid to return to the polls.”
Mathilde Panot, president of France Unbowed in the National Assembly, condemned the reappointment. “Never before has a president wanted so much to govern by disgust and anger. Lecornu, who resigned on Monday, was reappointed by Macron on Friday. Macron miserably postpones the inevitable: his departure,” said Panot.
Yael Braun-Pivet, president of the National Assembly, struck a different tone, however.
“I note the reappointment of Sebastien Lecornu as Matignon [the French prime minister’s residence]. For weeks now, the National Assembly has been in full working order, ready to play its role to the full: debating, scrutinising and voting. Now it’s time to get down to work. It’s about time!”
French politics has been deadlocked ever since Macron gambled last year on snap polls that he hoped would consolidate power – but ended instead in a hung Parliament and more seats for the far right.