France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, is under intense pressure to call snap parliamentary elections or resign as former allies join his opponents in demanding he act to end a spiralling political crisis in the EU’s second biggest economy.
Macron’s first prime minister on Tuesday urged the president to step down amid mounting frustration even within the president’s own camp over one of the worst spells of political chaos in France since the foundation of its Fifth Republic in 1958.
Édouard Philippe, prime minister from 2017 to 2020 and now leader of a Macron-allied party, said he should announce an early presidential election once a budget for next year was adopted. Macron was re-elected in April 2022 for a five-year term, but since snap legislative elections in 2024 his appointees as prime minister have been unable to summon a parliamentary majority to pass a budget.
“Time is of the essence,” Philippe said. “We are not going to prolong what we have been experiencing for the past six months. Another 18 months is far too long and it is damaging France. The political game we are playing today is distressing.”
Philippe, who polls suggest is the best-placed candidate to lead the political centre in the next presidential elections, was not alone among Macron’s former prime ministers in distancing himself from the beleaguered head of state.
Gabriel Attal – whose brief tenure as France’s youngest-ever prime minister ended last year when Macron called the snap vote that produced France’s present hung parliament – said he no longer understood the president’s decisions.
Attal, who now leads the main pro-Macron party, told French media that after burning through five prime ministers in under two years it was “time to try something else”, criticising what he called Macron’s “determination to keep control”.
The calls came after the outgoing prime minister, Sébastien Lecornu, who was appointed only 28 days ago, resigned with his 14-hour-old cabinet on Monday but was asked by Macron to hold last-ditch talks with party leaders to try to rally support.
Macron gave Lecornu until Wednesday evening to try to “define a platform for action and stability”. However, in a sign of the difficulties he faces, the far-right National Rally (RN), the largest single party in parliament, refused to attend.
“These umpteenth negotiations no longer aim to protect the interests of the French people, but those of the president himself,” said the party, which polls suggest would finish first in an eventual parliamentary election but is unlikely to secure a majority.
In a scathing editorial, Le Monde said the crisis was a “tragic farce” and “yet another demonstration of the unravelling” of Macron’s second mandate since his re-election in 2022. “The president finds himself in a major crisis,” it said.
The newspaper castigated France’s “entire political class”, which it said was “incapable of rising to the challenge”, preferring to posture in the run-up to the presidential ballot due in 2027 rather than “build a compromise essential for the months to come”.
France has been in political crisis for more than a year since the 2024 election – called in response to far-right successes in the European parliamentary elections that year – produced a parliament divided between three more or less equal blocs: the left, far right and Macron’s own centre-right alliance, with no majority.
Among other options, Macron could reappoint Lecornu, select another new prime minister – possibly a non-party-political technocrat – who would become his eighth, or dissolve parliament again and hold new legislative elections.
He has long said he is reluctant hold fresh legislative elections, which polls suggest would probably return another divided parliament, but on Monday hinted he may be prepared to do so if Lecornu fails in his last-chance mission.
Macron has also repeatedly insisted he will not resign before the end of his mandate in 2027.
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