Emmanuel Macron: I won’t resign, I was elected ‘to serve, to serve, and to serve’
Emmanuel Macron rejected calls to resign and blasted his opponents on Monday, as his latest government was threatened by two no-confidence motions that could bring it down by the end of the week.
France is in the midst of its worst political crisis in decades as a succession of minority governments seek to push deficit-reducing budgets through a truculent legislature split into three distinct ideological blocs.
Mr Macron has burned through five prime ministers in less than two years, and many of his rivals have said the only way out of the crisis is for the president to call fresh legislative elections or resign, both of which he has refused to do.
Shortly after arriving in Egypt on Monday to attend a meeting to end the war in Gaza, Mr Macron was defiant, blaming his rivals for destabilising France and saying he had no plans to step down before his second and final term ends in 2027.
“I ensure continuity and stability, and I will continue to do so,” he said, urging people not to forget that the mandate given to the president means “to serve, to serve, and to serve”.
On Friday, Mr Macron reappointed Sebastien Lecornu, who had resigned as prime minister earlier in the week. Mr Macron’s office announced Mr Lecornu’s new cabinet late on Sunday, with many of the top jobs remaining unchanged, despite the prime minister’s pledge to name ministers who embody “renewal and diversity”.
Both the hard-left “France Unbowed” (LFI) party and the far-right National Rally (RN) filed no-confidence motions on Monday.
Mr Lecornu will probably face a no-confidence vote on Thursday. It’s unclear if he has the votes needed to survive, as the Socialists – whose support he will almost certainly need to fight on – are keeping their options open.
The Socialists want Mr Lecornu to repeal Mr Macron’s pension reform and roll out a billionaires tax, measures the right outright rejects.
“There will be no censure if the prime minister commits to abandoning Article 49.3 and suspending the pension reform,” Socialist parliamentarian Philippe Brun told Reuters, referring to the constitutional tool used to ram legislation through parliament without a vote, and echoing remarks by the party’s secretary Olivier Faure on Sunday.
Mr Lecornu, already France’s shortest serving prime minister with a first term that lasted just 27 days, has not ruled out resigning again if he cannot fulfil his mission.
RN party president Jordan Bardella, asked on TF1 TV whether he would support a motion by the hard-left, said: “I’m not a sectarian … I believe that France’s interest today is to ensure that Emmanuel Macron is stopped in his tracks”.
The newly appointed cabinet met for the first time on Monday afternoon and must present a budget by Wednesday.
France has the eurozone’s largest deficit, and Mr Macron has tasked a string of prime ministers with passing slimmed-down budgets.
