Welcome back to World Brief, where we’re looking at a fragile alliance in France’s Parliament, potential covert U.S. operations inside Venezuela, and coalition-building talks in Japan.
Bargaining Chips
French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu survived two no-confidence votes in the National Assembly on Thursday, dodging what would have been the second time that the French government had collapsed in less than two weeks. But his survival came at a hefty price, and with 2026 budget negotiations kicking off next week, Lecornu is not out of hot water yet.
France is in the midst of its worst political crisis in decades. The French Parliament is deeply divided, with the far left and far right both denouncing French President Emmanuel Macron’s controversial pension reform plan. Such dissent has made passing a deficit-reducing budget near impossible, and it has forced Macron to replace his premier three times in a year (four, if you’re counting Lecornu’s resignation earlier this month, after which he was reappointed just days later).
To survive Thursday’s votes, Lecornu sacrificed a major economic policy. On Tuesday, he offered to suspend Macron’s pension reform plan (including an increase of the retirement age) until after the 2027 presidential election. In exchange, he secured the backing of the Socialist Party, though seven lawmakers belonging to or affiliated with the Socialists still broke ranks on Thursday to vote in favor of his ouster.
By delaying the pension reform plan, which sparked monthslong anti-government protests in 2023 after Macron announced that he would move forward with it, Lecornu risks killing off one of Macron’s central economic promises. This could leave the French president with few domestic achievements after eight years in office.
However, with the Socialists’ support, the hard left’s no-confidence motion failed with 271 votes, just 18 votes short of what was needed to dissolve Lecornu’s 4-day-old government. A second motion, tabled by the far-right National Rally party, failed by a larger margin, with only 144 lawmakers in favor.
“This is obviously the moment of truth,” Lecornu told parliamentarians ahead of the vote. “Do not take the budget for the nation and the budget for our social security as hostages.”
Such budget negotiations will begin on Monday and are expected to last weeks. Lecornu’s draft proposes lowering Paris’s deficit to between 4.7 percent and 5 percent of the nation’s GDP; France’s 2024 deficit sat at 5.8 percent, nearly double the European Union’s 3 percent limit.
But Lecornu will not be able to rely on the Socialists to pass his budget and win Macron a much-needed parliamentary victory. The Socialists have warned Lecornu that they will vote down his proposal if their demands are not met; specifically, the party wants a tax on billionaires added to the budget. “Our decision not to vote the government down today is by no means a pact,” Socialist lawmaker Laurent Baumel said. “We are not committing to anything.”
Meanwhile, opponents on the far left and far right are continuing to call for snap elections as well as for Macron’s resignation before his term ends in 2027. “The Lecornu government is on borrowed time,” Éric Coquerel of the left-wing France Unbowed party wrote on X. “The battle over the budget begins.”
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What We’re Following
Covert operations in Venezuela. U.S. President Donald Trump confirmed on Wednesday that the White House had authorized the CIA to conduct covert operations inside Venezuela, citing two reasons. “No. 1, they have emptied their prisons into the United States of America,” Trump claimed. “And the other thing, the drugs, we have a lot of drugs coming in from Venezuela, and a lot of the Venezuelan drugs come in through the sea.” However, he did not say whether he had yet ordered such operations to be carried out.
In recent weeks, the United States has launched a series of attacks on alleged drug-smuggling boats in the Caribbean, killing at least 27 people. Early this month, a leaked memo revealed that Trump had declared drug cartels to be unlawful combatants, saying Washington was now in an “armed conflict” with them. And on Wednesday, he suggested that the White House was “looking at land” in Venezuela as potential future targets.
Caracas was quick to denounce Trump’s comments. “This unprecedented statement constitutes a very serious violation of international law and the United Nations’ Charter and obliges the community of countries to denounce these clearly immoderate and inconceivable statements,” Venezuela’s foreign ministry said in a statement.
A new coalition partner? Sanae Takaichi, the newly elected head of Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), held coalition-building talks with leaders of the right-wing Japan Innovation Party on Thursday in an effort to secure enough outside support to make her the country’s next prime minister. The parties are expected to meet again on Friday before making a final decision next Monday.
Takaichi’s bid for the premiership had appeared all but certain when the LDP, in power almost continuously since 1955, chose her to succeed Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba. But the Komeito party’s decision last Friday to withdraw from the long-held coalition has brought new unpredictability to her appointment.
If the Innovation Party chooses to align with the LDP, then Takaichi’s party will be just two seats short of a majority in Japan’s lower house, making it far easier for Takaichi to take office. But LDP lawmakers must move quickly before the opposition Constitutional Democratic Party convinces Innovation to instead join its alliance with the Democratic Party for the People (DPFP) and back DPFP leader Yuichiro Tamaki for the premiership.
Too dangerous to function. Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) announced on Wednesday that it would permanently close its emergency care center in the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince, citing surging gang violence. Having moved to the neighborhood of Turgeau in 2021 for security reasons, the center now joins the more than 60 percent of Port-au-Prince health care facilities that have shuttered or become nonfunctional in recent years.
“The building has already been hit several times by stray bullets due to its location close to the combat zones, which would make resuming activities too dangerous for both patients and staff,” said Jean-Marc Biquet, the MSF head of mission in Haiti. In March, gunmen opened fire on four MSF vehicles evacuating staff from the facility, forcing a temporary closure.
More than 3,100 people were killed and an additional 1,100 others injured across Haiti from January to June, according to the United Nations. And new data on Wednesday showed that the violence has displaced a record 1.4 million people, a 36 percent increase since the end of 2024.
Odds and Ends
Where once the U.S. passport was regarded as the strongest in the world, it has since fallen from grace. On Tuesday, the Henley Passport Index, which ranks countries based on how many destinations a passport-holder can visit without needing a visa, moved the United States from 10th to 12th place—tying it with Malaysia. This is the first time that Washington has fallen below the top 10 since the index’s creation 20 years ago, largely due to Trump’s tightening immigration policies. This year’s first-place finisher: Singapore, with 193 visa-free destinations.
The post Lecornu Survives Two No-Confidence Votes—at a Price appeared first on Foreign Policy.
