French President Emmanuel Macron’s grip on the Élysée Palace is becoming increasingly tenuous as he faces calls to resign or dissolve the National Assembly in the wake of the collapse of the third government in Paris in under a year on Monday morning.
Less than a month after being appointed by President Macron and just hours after unveiling his cabinet, Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu sensationally submitted his resignation after it became clear that his government would either implode from within or be brought down by opposition parties in the parliament.
Although Lecornu had attempted to mollify the disparate factions, with overtures such as vowing not to turn to Article 49.3 of the constitution to force through his budget without parliamentary approval, his continuity Macronist cabinet selections on Sunday evening enraged just about everyone, outside the fading establishment, of course.
Crucially, it appeared that he had also lost the confidence of the centre-right Les Républicains, whose support was critical to maintaining a governing minority coalition. Thus, without any perceivable path forward, Lecornu was forced to resign, becoming the shortest-tenured prime minister in modern French history — beating the record set by EU Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier last year — and marking the third government collapse in under a year.
With it becoming increasingly clear that France is ungovernable in its current political construction — a result of President Macron’s decision to form an election pact with the leftist New Popular Front in last year’s snap legislative elections in a desperate bid to prevent Marine Le Pen’s National Rally from taking control of the legislature — the arch globalist politician now faces demands to resign or once again call for snap elections to break the logjam in the National Assembly.
Républicain Mayor of Cannes, David Lisnard, was among the first to call for Macron to resign, warning that the “Fifth Republic and the future of our country are at stake”.
“The interest of France requires that Emmanuel Macron schedule his resignation, in order to preserve the institutions and unblock a situation that has been unavoidable since the absurd dissolution. He is the primary person responsible for this situation,” Lisnard wrote on X.
The head of the far-left La France Insoumise (LFI/France in Rebellion) party in the National Assembly, Mathilde Panot, joined the chorus, saying: “Three Prime Ministers defeated in less than a year. The countdown has begun. Macron must go.”
LFI leader and former presidential candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon suggested that the parliament to “immediately” consider his motion to dismiss Macron, which already has over 100 MP backers.
On the other side, Marine Le Pen and her populist allies redoubled their demand that Macron dissolve the National Assembly and call for snap legislative elections.
The National Rally leader said per Le Figaro: “I call on him to dissolve the National Assembly, we’ve reached the end of the road. There won’t be any more tomorrow… We’ve reached the end of the joke, the farce has gone on long enough.”
Le Pen’s deputy, Jordan Bardella added: “There can be no restored stability without a return to the polls and without the dissolution of the National Assembly.
“The National Rally will stand ready to assume its responsibilities and to govern if the French grant it a majority.”
Macron, who has steadfastly vowed to finish the remaining two years of his second and final term in office, is also facing pressure from outside the French political sphere, with the Paris Stock Exchange falling sharply by nearly 2 points in the wake of Prime Minister Lecornu’s resignation.
Perhaps even more concerningly for the embattled French leader, a spokesman for the German government said on Monday that a “stable France” is necessary for Europe, suggesting that Berlin has grown tired of Macron’s merry-go-round of prime ministers and failure to provide steady leadership.
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