France’s Macron names Sebastien Lecornu as new prime minister : NPR

The French Minister of Defense, Sebastien Lecornu, on the left, receives President Emmanuel Macron during the 55th international air show in Paris at Le Bourget airport near Paris, June 20, 2025. Macron appointed Lecornu the new Prime Minister on Tuesday.

Benoit Tessier / AP file

hide

tilting legend

Benoit Tessier / AP file

Paris – French President Emmanuel Macron appointed his Minister of Defense, Sébastien Lecornu, while the new Prime Minister of the country after former Prime Minister François Bayrou submitted his resignation on Tuesday morning.

Lecornu, 39, is a loyalist of Macron who has been Minister of Defense since 2022. He has training in local politics, but has had a rapid rise on the national scene, working as a junior minister for the environment and foreign territories before being appointed Minister of Defense.

The legislators voted on Bayrou’s economic plans on Monday in a ballot without confidence, provoking the collapse of his government.

Before the vote on Monday, Bayrou said that the great deficit and the high debt levels of France made difficult economic decisions and urged deputies in Parliament to face the facts: “You have the power to overthrow the government, but you do not have the power to erase reality,” he said.

He lost the vote 364 to 194 – a decisive defeat and greater than expected.

The political parties on the far left and the far right celebrated the defeat of Bayrou and expressed hope that a replacement would be chosen in their ranks. Jean-Luc Mélenchon, chief of the unbouched party of France, described him as “victory for the people”, and at the end of what he said to be “Macron’s policies for the rich”.

Marine Le Pen, head of the far -right national rally, went further, calling for new early elections: “The new majority resulting from these elections must be able to write a budget, so that our country has a budget.”

It was the fourth time that Macron had to choose a new head of government in the past year.

“We are going to enter a sort of gray political zone,” said French political journalist Thierry Arnaud, warning that any new Prime Minister would have a difficult task to “negotiate their path through this very difficult parliament to find a majority”.

Macron’s missed bet

In June 2024, Macron dissolved the French Parliament after the national rally captured a Shocking 31.4% of votes in the elections of the European Parliament.

He made a bet, calling for early national elections, clearly hoping that the far -right breakthrough would frighten certain voters to support his own majority, so that he can govern more easily.

The bet failed.

No party has emerged with a majority. And now, even if the national rally controls the largest block of voting, political scientist Corinne Mellul said there was little chance that Macron calls someone from the far right.

“It’s out of the question,” she said. “I would say that it is a point of honor. Because in both terms, he ran on a platform to keep the national rally at a distance and do everything it takes. Thus, the appointment of a Prime Minister of the Party would recognize that he failed.”

Mellul thinks that Macron has already failed in a sense, because the national rally has never done best. This is the most popular political party in France, with a third parties of the voters questioned Saying regularly that they would vote for it.

Arnaud claims that Macron’s options are limited and with an approval rating About 15%, He risks losing control of the situation.

“In these circumstances, it is very difficult to be politically in charge of what will then happen in the country,” he said.

So how is Macron, who is so active on the international scene, did he get here?

A confidence problem

Stéphane Rozès, a sounder who worked for three French presidents, says that Macron has never accumulated enough political capital at home.

“He did not even take the trouble to campaign in 2022,” he said, referring to the presidential election that Macron won that year. “He ran on the fear of the war in Ukraine and the fear of the extreme right. He did not conclude a contract between him and the French.”

Macron has also crossed most of its economic reforms without popular support, often taking action by using an emergency clause in the Constitution instead of counting on a majority in Parliament.

The progress he has made now take place, explains political analyst Nicole Bacharan.

“During his first mandate, Macron worked very hard to reform our economy and our social system and make it more effective and in the second mandate, he broke everything,” she said.

In the fractured political environment of France, Mellul believes that it will be difficult for a Prime Minister of any party to obtain a majority to adopt a budget. This represents a disaster, explains Douglas Webber, professor emeritus of political science at the International Business School Lnsead, south of Paris.

“Without a new budget and without a kind of measures to increase taxes, to reduce spending, the French government’s deficit will continue to grow. And France will suffer a lot of pressure on bond markets and will have to pay a higher interest rate on any type of money it borrows,” webber.

The Bayrou government only lasted nine months. His predecessor, Michel Barnier, lasted 90 days.

Bacharan says that many people are desperate for the uncertainty that it caused the country.

“There is no confidence in our politicians, no confidence in our political system and no confidence in the economy,” she said. And of course no confidence in the President of the Republic. “”