PARIS — French President Emmanuel Macron has tapped Armed Forces Minister Sébastien Lecornu as the country’s next prime minister.
Macron nominated the 39-year-old as France’s next head of government on Tuesday hours after accepting the resignation of François Bayrou, whose government was resoundingly defeated in a confidence vote Monday over plans to slash next year’s budget by €43.8 billion.
Macron’s office said in a statement that the president had tasked Lecornu with “consulting the political forces represented in parliament” to adopt a budget and move forward with the business of running the country.
“The president of the Republic is convinced that, on this basis, an agreement between the political forces is possible while respecting each party’s convictions,” the statement read.
Lecornu was the purported frontrunner to succeed Bayrou, and Macron’s office was even game-planning his appointment option Monday evening, according to two officials with direct knowledge of the matter.
The armed forces minister was reportedly hitting the phones over the weekend to drum up support for his potential premiership and has already started reaching out to potential ministerial candidates, according to two people with direct knowledge of the calls who were granted anonymity to discuss backroom negotiations.
Part of Lecornu’s appeal is his supposed ability to reach across the political aisle at a time of immense political paralysis. An individual close to Lecornu had told POLITICO the 39-year-old privately boasts of enjoying a privileged relationship with Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally, while at the same time insisting he could lead a coalition government of both the right and the left.
Le Pen, however, was quick to slam the appointment and reiterated her calls for new parliamentary elections. “The president has fired the last shot of macronism, holed up in his bunker with his small group of loyalists,” she wrote in a post on X.
On the opposite end of the political spectrum, far-left France Unbowed leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon called the appointment a “sad comedy of contempt for parliament” and called on Macron to resign.
This breaking story will be updated.
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