♻️Lecornu, rebelote
The French political crisis continues as Sébastien Lecornu quits and is renominated, Emmanuel Macron is betrayed by his ally Edouard Philippe's presidential ambitions, and budget deadlines approach
👋Hey guys, Julien here. The French Dispatch is a reader-supported publication, and both our coverage of current affairs as well as our ability to bring you more news and information on the world around us is entirely funded by paid subscriptions and donations.
If you enjoy reading articles written by high-level experts, then make sure to support the publication by liking, subscribing, and sharing it with your friends and colleagues, and consider taking a paid subscription.
Stories of the week
⏱️The French Political Crisis continues
2️⃣Lecornu 2
💶Budget timeline gets tighter
⏱️The French Political Crisis continues
So, my dear readers. In the space of a week, we’ve had a government announcement, a government resignation, a week of constant discord, and as of Friday night, we’re now on to the Second Lecornu government.
As I pointed out last week during the weekly dispatch, Lecornu arrived with an almost identical budget proposal, seemed to have changed little to nothing, and by all metrics and reactions, the proposed government was effectively collapsing before it had even formed.
You can read more here:
⏰The Lecornu Government is Collapsing Before it Forms
With Sébastien Lecornu having been nominated by President Emmanuel Macron to be Prime Minister in early September, the former Minister of the Armies has been working hard to figure out what kind of government he can form, who he can work with, what he can offer, and how much of his political ideas he can actually apply in the current situation.
Which, as I covered here, is not much better than when Bayrou was around.
Now, Lecornu proceeded to announce his government late on the evening of Sunday, 5 October, at which point the clock started ticking immediately, with one major fight breaking out with Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau (LR) over the nomination of Bruno Le Maire (REN) as the prestigious Minister for the Armies.
The reason for this remains unclear due to political meandering; however, there are two things that we know for certain: Retailleau was not aware that Le Maire had been appointed a minister until it was publicly announced, and aside from this, he was expecting more ministers and sous-ministres for his party.
Bref.
At 09h00 Paris time on Monday, 6 October, everybody suddenly received the notification that Sébastien Lecornu had become the latest victim of the ongoing political crisis in France and that he had provided his resignation to President Emmanuel Macron.
The immediate events are covered here:
Lecornu Resigns as France Succumbs to Political Chaos
Lecornu is gone, but why did he resign? Will there be a new PM or new elections? Will Macron resign? And what is the destitution procedure that the opposition is trying to force against Macron?
Now, the situation basically devolved into a state of semi-organised chaos, as Emmanuel Macron tasked Sébastien Lecornu with engaging in final negotiations with all the relevant parties, with a deadline of Wednesday 9 October 2025, while himself potentially engaging in the preparations for anticipated legislative elections this year.
We also had many of Macron’s allies moving against him, such as Edouard Philippe who was pushing Macron to resign, Attal trying to manoeuvre through the mess, and with French extremists using a variety of strategies to come out ahead.
I covered all of this, and the polling, on Wednesday’s Substack live:
France Update - Macron vs Philippe, Lecornu's failing negotiations, Extremist strategies, and Attal’s statement
- Lecornu’s final negotiations
- Upcoming legislative elections
- The reason why Edouard Philippe wants Macron to resign
- The strategies being deployed by French extremists
- The current polling situation
And now we’ve arrived at our current situation: Emmanuel Macron renominated Sébastien Lecornu as Prime Minister.
So:
2️⃣Lecornu 2
Apparently not seeing any better option, or as some have posited, attempting to buy himself more time, Emmanuel Macron put Lecornu back on the frontlines.
This went down as well as you can imagine.
The French left-wing politicians who left the final negotiation meeting on Friday had already announced that the President wasn’t going to choose a left-wing politician as Prime Minister.
Olivier Faure, the first secretary of the Parti Socialiste who Emmanuel Macron needs for a stable government, made it clear outright that his red lines had not changed, despite some flexibility announced earlier:
“If the change of course is not forthcoming, we will censor immediately.
We have received a mandate from the French to act on pensions, purchasing power, and tax justice. We have no other concerns. The Parliament must be able to decide on these issues.
We do not want chaos and are not seeking to provoke a dissolution at all costs, but we are not afraid of it either. And we will know how to show that another path is possible.”
- Faure speaking to BFM.TV
He also spoke about having demanded a left-wing Prime Minister, which clearly didn’t happen.
Marine Tondelier, the leader of the French greens and another party required for any hope of stability, was more aggressive of her condemnation of the meetings:
“We are leaving this meeting stunned.
We have no answers, no commitments on anything.
But we know one thing: the next Prime Minister will be part of the “common foundation” already tested and disapproved three times.
I am very worried tonight: all this is going to end badly.”
- Marine Tondelier speaking to FranceInfo
From their side, Les Républicains did what they always do and announced that any move on Pension reforms would lead to the centre-right quitting the government and bringing it down (again, I may add).
A brutal response
And once the final decision was announced, the political class was incredulous.
Manuel Bompard (LFI) called the decision a “middle finger to the French”
“Locked in his ivory tower, Emmanuel Macron reappoints Sébastien Lecornu as Prime Minister.
A new middle finger to the French from an irresponsible man drunk on his power.
France and its people are humiliated.
For our dignity, the rebellious deputies will immediately censure this government.
Because nothing will change without Macron’s departure, we will table a new motion to impeach the President of the Republic.”
- Manuel Bompard on Twitter
Tondelier, reacting for the Ecologists, announced that there was “no argument to not” censure the government, and the PS announced that unless there was an “immediate and complete suspension” of the pension reform, the PS would censure Lecornu.
The far-right, as easily predicted, also came out of the gate aggressively, with Jordan Bardella announcing that the RN would “of course immediately censure this team without any future”, calling the announcement a “bad joke, a democratic shame and a humiliation for the French.”
His boss and mentor, convicted criminal Marine Le Pen, likewise came out and took a few swings, also decrying the promise of not using Article 49.3 as a manipulation:
“The manoeuvre is now transparent: the abandonment of 49.3 was only intended to allow the budget to be passed by ordinances. The manoeuvres continued, censorship, consequently, was imposed and dissolution was more than ever unavoidable.”
Les Républicains, on their side, are currently embroiled in some bizarre form of civil war (again), with their leader, Bruno Retailleau, once again refusing to cooperate with Lecornu, but struggling to bring his party along on his political adventure.
And as another reminder of the most recent vote of confidence in Bayrou’s government, this is what Lecornu is up against:
Now, what happens next will depend entirely on how Lecornu manages to negotiate some form of coalition government, and what he does with the fact that Emmanuel Macron has apparently given him a blank check to find a way out of this ongoing political crisis.
And if he fails to do so, then we can expect ourselves to live out this week of political chaos yet again.
For the time being, Lecornu has set out no timetable to put in place a government of some kind, and seems to want to do this right without pushing too fast. Whilst also keeping open the option of resigning once again if the conditions for a functioning government are still not there.
The problem that he finds himself dealing with, however, is that time is now very short for finding a budget.
💶Budget timeline gets tighter
So, the budget, that thing countries need to function, is a very very urgent problem that everybody needs to figure out immediately.
According to the French constitution, the Assemblée National requires 70 days to examine a draft budget before the hard deadline of 31 December every year.
For a quick summary of the procedure:
The Ministry for the Economy and Finance coordinates with all other ministries to establish spending ceilings and revenue projections
After internal negotiations and final decisions by the Prime Minister and the President, the Cabinet approves the draft. By law, this proposal must be submitted to Parliament before the first Tuesday in October, following the rules set out in the ‘Loi organique n° 2001-692 du 1 août 2001 relative aux lois de finances’, which introduced greater transparency and performance-based budgeting
The opinion of the High Council of Public Finances must also be attached to the draft law for the yearly budget.
Once the draft reaches Parliament, both the National Assembly and the Senate review, amend, and debate the bill. In the event of disagreement between the two chambers, the National Assembly has the decisive vote
Parliament is given a fixed period of 70 days to adopt the budget. If no agreement is reached within this timeframe, the government has the authority to enact the budget by ordinance
After the budget is adopted and promulgated, the relevant ministries implement it under the oversight of the Budget Directorate and the General Directorate of Public Finances.
Now, there are several problems here:
Firstly, we don’t currently have a government, and ideally, Lecornu would need to nominate one on Monday, or at the very latest Tuesday, in order to be able to present the budget text to the Council of Ministers.
Secondly, as the first president of the Court of Auditors / President of the High Council of Public Finances, Pierre Moscovici stated in an interview with Le Parisien, “this finance bill cannot be different from (the copy) we examined” due to the legal procedures requiring this.
And as Moscovici outlined, the Prime Minister can no longer modify the current text, because it would create a major legal problem and add more chaos to the proceedings.
However, this doesn’t mean that the Parliamentarians cannot amend the texts during the upcoming debates, and Moscovici went as far as to say that there is still great room for manoeuvre.
But let’s see how this plays out, and what we have to discuss during one of our many Substack Lives.
Thank you for reading the French Dispatch! If you liked what you read, you should like this post and subscribe to the newsletter by clicking/tapping the button below:
And if you’d like to contribute a coffee or two to help fuel my coverage of the wild world of politics, feel free to click on the picture below:
