Lecornu’s turn to tame the French political beast Will he survive beyond October deadline?

Few French prime ministers have entered office being as exposed to immediate rejection and catastrophic failure as Sébastien Lecornu. President Emmanuel Macron’s fifth appointee in just 21 months faces a dual crisis: a soaring deficit and a fractured National Assembly, challenges that already toppled two seasoned politicians, François Bayrou and Michel Barnier, in under a year.

Lecornu’s rise has been rapid since he broke with the center right to join Macron’s promised “revolution of the center” eight years ago. Despite holding several ministerial roles, including that of Defence before his appointment as PM, an article by Politico claims that he remains little known to the French public. 

The outlet argues that through his multiple ministerial posts, Lecornu has become closer to Macron than any of the other prime ministers or senior ministers in the six governments since the president entered the Élysée in 2017.

Time, however, is not on his side. Lecornu has less than two weeks to outline a deficit-cutting deal with the Socialist swing group in the Assembly — the same issue that cost his predecessor his job — and only a month before presenting a detailed 2026 budget to parliament on October 13.

Macron has given him an even tighter deadline: the “main principles of a budget deal” must be settled before ministerial posts are assigned, once the president returns from the UN General Assembly on September 24.

Yet as Politico points out, even if a broad framework is reached, detailed talks with the Socialists could drag on, putting Lecornu’s government at risk of collapse before the end of October.

Hurdles Lecornu must clear for survival

The Socialists, whose 66 Assembly votes will decide his fate, demand that Lecornu abandon Bayrou’s plan to cut next year’s deficit by €44 billion. Instead, they want no more than €22 billion in cuts, largely through a new tax on the “super rich.” More contentious still, they are insisting on suspending Macron’s 2023 pension reform, which triggered nationwide protests.

Lecornu has already shown flexibility. He told French media that he would drop Bayrou’s idea of scrapping two public holidays to save €4 billion, and will settle for reducing the deficit to 4.6% of GDP in 2025, down from an expected 5.4% this year.

The Socialist camp maintains that almost all deficit savings can be achieved with their wealth tax. Lecornu’s team is prepared to accept a narrower version, applied only to non-commercial assets, but the center-right wing of the minority coalition has warned that major tax hikes would cross their red lines.

The biggest stumbling block remains pensions. Socialist leaders insist “there can be no deal unless” the government halts the increase in the retirement age from 62 to 64, imposed under emergency powers in 2023.

Politico stresses that this is a nonstarter: the pension reform is one of the few tangible achievements of Macron’s second term and among the rare deficit-reduction measures passed in years. Rolling it back would “undermine any remaining market confidence in France’s ability to confront its debt problem.”

Caught between Socialist demands for taxing the wealthy and his coalition’s anti-tax stance, Lecornu has little room to maneuver. Failure to strike a balance could push France into what Politico calls “truly uncharted territory.”

By Nazrin Sadigova