French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu has resigned less than a month after his appointment, risking further fracturing within an already divided government. Lecornu announced he was stepping down on Monday morning, and the move was swiftly accepted by President Emmanuel Macron.
The shock decision comes less than 24 hours after Lecornu’s new cabinet was unveiled and received criticism across the political spectrum. The first cabinet meeting was scheduled for 4 p.m., local time, on Monday.
In a national address, Lecornu, the seventh Prime Minister to serve under the eight-year presidency of Macron, outlined the difficulties he has faced in bringing the French government together in agreement on a national budget.
“There is always the feeling that the line is moving back each time we move forward,” said Lecornu in reference to negotiations on key issues including pensions, tax, and matters related to unemployment figures.
Lecornu, an ally of Macron and a member of the President’s Renaissance party, said that his resignation comes in the face of three core issues.
He claimed there is a “profound rupture” amongst parliament members, some of whom “refuse to do their job as parliamentarians” in discussions over the budget and subsequent votes on amendments. He also accused parties within the government of continuing “to adopt a posture as if they all had an absolute majority in the National Assembly.” Lecornu went on to say the “reawakening of some partisan appetites” within the government had disrupted its function.
Per his address, Lecornu has refused to invoke Article 49.3 of the French constitution, which allows the Prime Minister to push a bill through the National Assembly, France’s lower house of Parliament, without a vote.
TIME has reached out to the French government for comment.
Lecornu was notably the only minister to have remained in government since Macron was first elected in 2017, a sign of the strong working relationship between himself and the French President. Therefore, his resignation has prompted reactions ranging from shock to confusion.
The cabinet restructure did attract harsh criticism over the weekend. Minister of Interior and politician from the center-right Republican party Bruno Retailleau said that the new cabinet did not reflect the promised “break” in parliament made by Lecornu, and that he would be meeting with party members Monday to discuss the “political situation created by this announcement.”
Leader of the far-right National Rally party Jordan Bardella said: “We had clearly told the Prime Minister: it’s either a break or censorship. The government announced this evening, made up of the last Macronists clinging to the raft of the Medusa, decidedly has everything of continuity, absolutely nothing of the break that the French are expecting.”
Bardella and Marine Le Pen, who was convicted in April after an investigation into a sprawling embezzlement scheme, are now calling for a snap general election in the wake of Lecornu’s resignation.
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