The Bitter Pill for Emmanuel Macron’s Survival

France’s political crisis has seen many dramatic twists and turns in the last 12 months, but the instability reached new heights this past week with the sudden resignation and reinstatement of Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu. It all began on the morning of October 6, when the premier announced his departure a mere hours after presenting the makeup of his government. Ostensibly in office for 14 hours, Lecornu’s first cabinet can be counted among the shortest-lived governments in European history. Tapped by President Emmanuel Macron in early September, he was already the country’s third prime minister since the autumn of 2024.

Macron reappointed his close ally on Friday, however, after several days of turbulence that had the country careening toward a new dissolution of the National Assembly. “I have proposed a government based on a simple mission and objections,” the reinstated Lecornu said in his inaugural address to parliament this Tuesday, after presenting a draft 2026 budget calling for some €30 billion in savings. Facing a spate of no-confidence votes scheduled for this Thursday, Lecornu urged the fractured lower house to “go beyond the divergences in our thinking and priorities and to focus on what it’s possible to do together.”

But the prospect of another government collapse has receded, with Lecornu offering an important concession to the center left: a suspension of the 2023 pension reform that increased the retirement age from 62 to 64 years. “I’ll propose to parliament that we suspend the 2023 retirement reform until the presidential election,” Lecornu told representatives on Tuesday, throwing his weight behind a freeze on the signature reform of Macron’s second term.

The law was enacted in the face of stiff public opposition thanks to a special power that allows the adoption of legislation without a direct vote in parliament—the so-called “49.3,” referring to its article in the French Constitution. That brash show of force came after a wave of protests and strikes and has remained one of the main rallying cries against the president.

Suspending the retirement law was the main demand from the Parti Socialiste, the swing bloc that Lecornu needs to woo in order to survive a no-confidence vote. “I’m still in the opposition but I want there to be a debate,” PS leader Olivier Faure said in a prime-time interview on Tuesday night, confirming that the center-left party would not support Thursday’s no-confidence motions. Assuming that all representatives in Lecornu’s fractious minority coalition support him, more than a third of the MPs in the PS caucus would need to defect from the party line in order to topple the government.

Hopes for a suspension of the retirement reform surged over the past week, as discipline broke down even among many of Macron’s most ardent loyalists. In an interview last Tuesday with Le Parisien, Elisabeth Borne, prime minster during the 2023 legislative drive, suggested that the president’s allies should agree to a suspension of the law. “We need to know when to listen and get moving,” Borne said, arguing that such a concession may prove to be the price for “the stability of the country.”

Resisting attacks on the pension reform has been a priority for the president’s camp since the election of the current hung parliament in July 2024; so Lecornu’s retreat risks alienating some members of the minority centrist-conservative coalition. His promise for parliament to take up the matter means that it could still fall victim to obstruction. (For now, Lecornu has also pledged that his government will disavow use of the 49.3— the same power used to enact the 2023 law, though it is traditionally reserved for budgeting.) Already this past spring, a round of negotiations between trade unions and business lobbies tasked with proposing pension reform amendments ended with no agreement.

But for all the reform’s symbolic importance to Macron and his allies, the actual cost of a suspension is itself marginal compared with the broader imbalances driving France’s budgetary crisis. By Lecornu’s own estimation, a suspension would cost a few hundred million euros in 2026 and some €1.8 billion by 2027. That’s still well below the €13 billion hit estimated to have resulted just from the collapse of Prime Minister Michel Barnier’s government last December.

What is also pushing the PS and the Macronist bloc together is a shared dread at the thought of snap elections—the likely next step if parliament votes down Lecornu’s government. All polls suggest that a return to the voting booths would most serve to strengthen the grip of the far-right Rassemblement National. The RN is already the largest single party in a parliament divided between 11 official caucuses.