PARIS — President Emmanuel Macron has just turned to one of his most trusted lieutenants — Sébastien Lecornu — to break the political impasse paralyzing France.
Lecornu, appointed as prime minister last week, is “the guy [Macron] drinks whiskey with at 3 a.m.,” said one government adviser, who was granted anonymity to speak candidly. The former armed forces minister also often spends his holidays with Macron at the seaside bastion of Fort de Brégançon.
Turning to one of the devoted inner circle has the air of a last desperate throw of the dice. If Lecornu can’t save Macron, it’s hard to see who can.
Lecornu is the fifth French prime minister in less than two years and it still seems highly unlikely that he will succeed in forcing the bitterly divided National Assembly to accept the tens of billions of euros of budgetary belt-tightening that are needed to ward off a debt crisis in the EU’s second-largest economy.
Even Macron knows it’s a big ask. In comments obtained by POLITICO, the president insisted the task ahead was not impossible, but admitted it was “unprecedented.”
So why does Macron think Lecornu might just be the man to strike a deal?
In short, the president views him as a fixer who can bridge the political divide. Lecornu got into the president’s good books by building a wide parliamentary consensus over increasing the military budget in 2023, and by helping him defuse the grassroots Yellow Vest protests that gripped the nation in 2018 and 2019.
As a former conservative, he has “good relations with Les Républicains party” and represents “continuity” with the president’s past governments, Macron said. On the other hand he has “earned the respect of leftwing forces” by the way he handled France’s rearmament in the wake of the war in Ukraine. And during defense budget talks in 2023 Lecornu was seen as having listened to the opposition and taken their views on board.
The key point is that Macron might not send Lecornu into battle unarmed in the way that he did his previous two prime ministers, EU veteran Michel Barnier and the centrist François Bayrou. This time, he could allow his premier to make some meaningful concessions on the core economic agenda.
Until now, Macron has battled to keep his key achievements untouched, notably his controversial pension reforms and long-running opposition to tax hikes, despite election defeats in 2022 and 2024.
“We’ll have to backtrack on some things, on [canceling two] bank holidays,” Macron said, referring to Bayrou’s draft budget that included removing two bank holidays. “We must be able to find a compromise.”
The man for the job
France’s new prime minister may not be well known to the general public, but while still only 39 years old he has notched a few political successes in his eight years by Macron’s side, honing skills that will be much needed in the weeks ahead.
As armed forces minister, Lecornu managed to overcome divisions in a highly fractured parliament and get more than 400 lawmakers to pass his seven-year military programming budget in 2023, which saw increased spending for the military.
“Some say it’s easy to negotiate budget increases,” said a close ally of the president. “He will tell you it wasn’t.”
Unlike political grandees Bayrou and Barnier, Lecornu has spent the last years in the political trenches at the National Assembly and in local politics.
“He knows how mercurial the National Assembly is, he’ll be maneuvering, he’ll be immersed in the debate,” said the same ally. “He knows how to negotiate.”
Less well known, but equally important in these politically volatile times, Lecornu was instrumental in helping Macron quell the Yellow Vest protests. As minister for local territories he helped organize a debate between the French president and local representatives in his Normandy constituency. This first successful meeting with the French public led to others, and to a tour of France that helped bring the protests to an end.
Off on the wrong foot
The true test of Lecornu’s worth still lies ahead and depends on whether he can strike a deal with the Socialists without alienating the conservatives, who look set to continue in government.
The risk for Lecornu is he’ll get caught in a bidding war he can’t win: The more he needs a deal, the more concessions opposition parties will demand.
There’s disappointment among the Socialists from the outset. The moderate left wanted to see a prime minister appointed from their ranks, and instead will have to deal with one of Macron’s closest allies.
This week, Socialist Party leader Olivier Faure warned that no Socialist would join Lecornu’s government and “if nothing changes” they would not shy from toppling the government.
If the moderate left remains outside the government, they will want to extract a high price for their tacit support. And on budget talks, there’s a massive gap to bridge.
The Socialists want to suspend Macron’s flagship reform of pensions, a red line for the president. They also want a tax on France’s ultra-rich individuals, the so-called Zucman tax, which has been slammed by Macron’s centrists as a futile proposal that will just encourage France’s wealthiest to move abroad.
Macron, however, has signaled some room for maneuver on the scale of the budget cuts needed. Bayrou’s plans to squeeze the 2026 French budget by €43.8 billion may well be shelved. The president “prefers structural reform to lopping €3 billion off the budget,” said the ally quoted above.
There might be a way. “If he refuses the Zucman tax but increases the minimum wage, we’ll take a look,” said a Socialist official.
Ultimately, Lecornu’s secret weapon could turn against him. The man who has Macron’s full confidence may have to extract uncomfortable concessions from his own boss — if he wants to survive as prime minister.
The post Why Macron thinks Lecornu can save France from the abyss appeared first on Politico.
