France’s embattled prime minister, Sébastien Lecornu, resigned on Monday less than 24 hours after forming a cabinet, catching the nation by surprise and making his government the shortest-lived in modern French history.
President Emmanuel Macron’s office said in a one-sentence statement that he had accepted the resignation of Mr. Lecornu and of his ministers, which came amid turmoil over the composition of his cabinet, an uneasy coalition of centrists and conservatives.
The resignation immediately ratcheted up pressure from opposition parties on the left and far right for Mr. Macron to call snap parliamentary elections or even to resign — options that the president has so far ruled out.
Mr. Lecornu, a close ally of Mr. Macron, was appointed less than a month ago. He is the third prime minister to leave office in under a year, a level of turmoil that until recently was rare in France.
In a televised address on Monday, Mr. Lecornu said he had “tried to build the conditions under which we might adopt a budget for France” and “respond to a handful of emergencies that cannot wait for 2027,” when France’s next presidential elections are scheduled. But, “the conditions were no longer met for me to perform the duties of prime minister,” he added.
Markets were rattled by the resignation, which came amid growing concern that Mr. Lecornu would not be able to get a budget passed by the end of the year to tackle France’s surging debt and deficit.
Since snap elections called by Mr. Macron in 2024, France’s lower house of Parliament has been deadlocked between a collection of left-wing parties; a tenuous center-right coalition; and a nationalist, anti-immigration far right. No party has a working majority.
Marine Le Pen, leader of the far-right National Rally party, said that only new parliamentary elections could break the political impasse.
“The farce has lasted long enough,” she told reporters on Monday after Mr. Lecornu’s resignation.
Mr. Lecornu, who was supposed to present a budget on Tuesday, faced a difficult balancing act. He needed to shore up a shaky alliance with conservatives while also appeasing the moderate Socialist Party, whose demands, like a wealth tax or a suspension of the newly raised legal retirement age, run counter to the pro-business agenda that Mr. Macron is keen to preserve.
In a last-ditch move, Mr. Lecornu announced last week that he would not use a constitutional prerogative to push through a spending bill without a full vote in Parliament, a tool that his predecessors had often used to force lawmakers to pass a budget. That announcement, promising that lawmakers would have their say, was a risky gamble aimed at staving off the threat of being toppled before budget discussions had even begun.
But in his speech on Monday, Mr. Lecornu accused France’s parties of failing to seize that opportunity. He blamed “partisan appetites,” suggesting that many politicians were more interested in preparing for the 2027 elections, and he argued that the absence of cross-party negotiations in French politics had set him up for failure.
“Political parties are continuing to act as though they all have an absolute majority in the National Assembly,” Mr. Lecornu said, referring to France’s lower house. “I was ready to compromise, but each political party wants the other to adopt its whole platform.”
For opposition parties, however, the fault lies with Mr. Macron for refusing to appoint a prime minister and a cabinet that might oppose him, even though his centrist alliance lost badly in the snap elections. Mr. Lecornu’s two predecessors and their cabinets had also been part of the conservative-centrist coalition.
Jean-Luc Mélenchon, longtime leader of the far-left France Unbowed party, said on Monday that Mr. Macron was “at the origin of the chaos, because he did not want to accept the results of the early parliamentary elections he had called.”
“Since then, the republic and democracy have been distorted,” added Mr. Mélenchon, whose party has for months been urging Mr. Macron to resign.
While supporters had touted Mr. Lecornu as an expert negotiator who could find a path to a budget, the immediate trigger for the resignation appears to have been a sudden bout of anger from conservatives within his coalition.
The Republicans, France’s mainstream conservative party, were particularly outraged over the appointment of Bruno Le Maire, who was economy and finance minister from 2017 to 2024, as defense minister. A veteran centrist, Mr. Le Maire is blamed by Mr. Macron’s opponents for letting the deficit soar on his watch.
Bruno Retailleau, the interior minister and leader of the Republicans, said hours after the cabinet was announced that it “did not reflect the expected break” from the past. Mr. Retailleau told the TF1 channel on Monday that Mr. Le Maire’s appointment, which he said Mr. Lecornu had hidden from him, had reflected a “disconnect” between the government and ordinary people.
“We need a budget, we need stability,” he said. “But I can’t commit to a government where I am not told everything.”
Ségolène Le Stradic and Liz Alderman contributed reporting.
Aurelien Breeden is a reporter for The Times in Paris, covering news from France.
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