Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu narrowly escapes parliamentary censure following dramatic concessions on Macron’s flagship pension reforms, but faces mounting pressure over 2026 budget
French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu has survived two no-confidence votes that threatened to topple his fragile government after just five days in office, securing crucial backing from the Socialist Party following his pledge to freeze President Emmanuel Macron’s controversial pension reforms.
The tightest vote, sponsored by the hard-left France Unbowed party, fell 18 votes short of the 289 needed to bring down the government, with 271 lawmakers backing the motion in the 577-seat National Assembly. A second motion tabled by Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally secured just 144 votes, well below the threshold required.
Thursday’s reprieve came after Lecornu made sweeping concessions to opposition parties, most notably offering to suspend Macron’s 2023 pension reform that would gradually raise France’s retirement age from 62 to 64. The pledge proved decisive in swaying the Socialist Party, whose 69 deputies held the balance of power in the divided chamber.
“We will not vote for a no-confidence motion at this stage,” Socialist parliamentary group spokesperson Dieynaba Diop confirmed on Tuesday, though party leader Olivier Faure warned they would have “no compunction” about supporting future censure votes if the government’s budget proposals failed to protect the less well-off.
The prime minister also promised not to invoke Article 49.3 of the constitution, a controversial mechanism that allows governments to push through legislation without parliamentary approval. This constitutional tool had been used to impose the 2023 pension reform despite widespread protests, making Lecornu’s pledge a significant transfer of power from the executive to parliament.
“The government will make suggestions, we will debate, and you will vote,” the 39-year-old Macron loyalist told lawmakers during Tuesday’s policy speech, marking a dramatic shift in the balance of power between the presidency and National Assembly.
Yaël Braun-Pivet, the National Assembly president and Macron ally, expressed cautious optimism following the votes. “I am pleased to see that today there is a majority in the National Assembly that is operating in this spirit: work, the search for compromise, the best possible effort,” she stated.
However, Lecornu’s survival comes at a steep political cost for President Macron, whose approval ratings have plummeted to just 14 per cent according to recent polling, making him the Fifth Republic’s most unpopular president. The suspension of pension reform threatens to eliminate one of Macron’s few significant domestic achievements after eight years in office.
The prime minister now faces the formidable challenge of steering a €30bn (£26bn) deficit-reduction budget through parliament before the end-of-year deadline. France’s public deficit reached 5.8 per cent of GDP in 2024, well above the European Union’s 3 per cent ceiling, with government debt approaching 118 per cent of GDP by 2026.
Lecornu’s draft budget aims to reduce the deficit to 4.7 per cent of GDP through spending cuts in healthcare and local administration, but opposition parties across the spectrum have denounced the measures as an attack on public services and the less affluent.
Far-right leader Marine Le Pen accused lawmakers of granting Lecornu a reprieve out of “terror of elections,” whilst warning she was waiting with “growing impatience” for parliament’s dissolution. Her National Rally party sees its best chance yet to take power in the 2027 presidential race when Macron’s second term ends.
The conservative Les Républicains party offered conditional support, with leader Laurent Wauquiez stating: “France needs a minimum of stability. France needs a government. France needs a budget.” However, even this backing appears fragile as budget negotiations intensify.
France’s political crisis has drawn sharp criticism from influential figures, including veteran essayist and former presidential adviser Alain Minc. In scathing comments, Minc declared that Macron “must now go down as the worst president of the Fifth Republic,” adding that the president had come to office promising to act as a bulwark against the far right but had instead left National Rally at the gates of power.
If you look around us, the Germans are petrified about what a French collapse will do to the economy. The British are petrified about the strategic implications. The Italians are laughing at us, because we always laughed at them,” Minc observed, highlighting the international concern over France’s instability.
The political turmoil has already impacted France’s economic outlook, with the International Monetary Fund projecting growth of just 0.8 per cent for 2025. Interest payments on government debt are projected to rise to 2.5 per cent of GDP in 2025 and 2.9 per cent in 2026, further constraining the government’s room for manoeuvre.
Lecornu, who had already served as France’s shortest-serving prime minister before his reappointment last week, warned lawmakers before Thursday’s votes against political manoeuvring. History will judge these political manoeuvres very harshly, where the platform of the National Assembly has essentially been confused with an advertising platform,” he said.
The prime minister urged deputies to set aside considerations about the 2027 presidential election, stating: “The presidential election will come. You will have the opportunity to campaign. For now, do not hold the nation’s budget and the Social Security budget hostage.”
With France’s National Assembly split between a centre-right bloc of under 200 MPs, a left-wing alliance of similar size, and a far-right bloc of about 140 deputies, none of the three prime ministers since June 2024 has managed to secure a reliable majority. This parliamentary deadlock has led to comparisons with the chronic instability of the pre-1958 Fourth Republic.
The coming weeks will prove critical as Lecornu attempts to navigate budget negotiations without the constitutional tools his predecessors relied upon. Socialist demands for a wealth tax on billionaires and opposition to spending cuts signal turbulent debates ahead, with the government’s survival hanging in the balance at every vote.
As France grapples with its worst political crisis in decades, the prospect of either new parliamentary elections or continued governmental paralysis looms large, threatening both domestic stability and France’s standing within the European Union at a time of mounting economic challenges.
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Image Credit:
Sébastien Lecornu — official portrait (cropped), photo by Patrice Normand / Leextra, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0
