France’s political landscape has rarely looked as precarious as it does today. On October 16, 2025, Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu narrowly survived two no-confidence votes in the National Assembly, granting his fledgling government a momentary reprieve, but leaving the country’s deep-seated political crisis unresolved. The immediate threat of a government collapse may have faded, yet the path forward for both Lecornu and President Emmanuel Macron remains fraught with uncertainty, bitter parliamentary divisions, and simmering public discontent.
The drama unfolded in the 577-seat National Assembly, where the hard-left France Unbowed (LFI) party’s motion garnered 271 votes—just 18 short of the 289 needed to topple Lecornu’s government. A second motion, brought by the far-right National Rally (RN), secured only 144 votes and was similarly unsuccessful, according to the Associated Press and France24. The outcome spared France an immediate snap election or the search for yet another prime minister—Lecornu is the country’s fourth in barely a year—but it did little to resolve the underlying deadlock that has paralyzed French governance for more than 15 months.
Lecornu’s survival was not won by strength, but by a series of high-stakes concessions. To sway the Socialist Party, which holds around 65 seats, Lecornu promised to suspend President Macron’s highly contentious pension reform—an initiative that would have raised the statutory retirement age to 64 by 2030, a move fiercely opposed by much of the left and the unions. The prime minister’s offer to freeze the reform until after the 2027 presidential election was critical. As NBC News reported, this concession was enough to tip the balance, giving Macron’s centrist alliance a narrow and fragile lifeline in the fractured chamber.
But the price of this victory is steep. By setting aside Macron’s flagship economic reform, Lecornu has threatened to kill off one of the president’s few remaining domestic achievements after eight years in office. The pension law, which triggered mass protests and strikes in 2023, had already become political kryptonite. French pensions touch a nerve: the average effective retirement age in France is just 60.7, compared to the OECD average of 64.4, and any attempt to push it higher has been met with fierce resistance. The government’s own estimates put the cost of the pension delay at €400 million for the coming year and €1.8 billion by 2027, as reported by the Associated Press.
Beyond pensions, Lecornu made another pivotal promise: he vowed not to use Article 49.3, a constitutional device that allows the government to force through legislation without a parliamentary vote. This move, intended to reassure lawmakers that they would have the final say over the 2026 budget, effectively handed control of the country’s finances to the parties in parliament. According to the BBC, this is a dramatic shift in power, reflecting the erosion of presidential authority since Macron’s ill-fated decision to dissolve parliament in July 2024—a gambit that backfired and left the Assembly split into three roughly equal blocs: the center-right, the left, and the far right, with no reliable majority in sight.
The consequences of this fragmentation are profound. Every major law now hinges on last-minute deals, and the next test is the 2026 budget, which must be passed before the year’s end. Lecornu’s draft budget aims to reduce France’s deficit to 4.7% of GDP, down from 5.8% in 2024, by making €30 billion in savings—primarily through cuts in health spending and local administration. But with France’s debt standing at a staggering 114% of GDP, the third highest in the EU after Greece and Italy, the pressure from both the European Union and the financial markets is intense. The political impasse has already driven French bond yields higher, raising alarms among investors and neighboring governments alike, as reported by Semafor.
The Socialists, emboldened by their newfound leverage, have already set their sights on further concessions. On Wednesday, they called for the inclusion of a tax on billionaires in the 2026 budget, underlining just how weak Lecornu’s negotiating position has become. Socialist leader Olivier Faure made it clear that if the government fails to address their concerns over social and fiscal justice, he would have "no compunction about supporting a new vote of censure." The General Confederation of Labor (CGT) union, for its part, has already called for nationwide protests on November 6, denouncing the austerity measures as unfair to retirees and the less well-off.
Meanwhile, the far left and far right remain eager to bring down the government at the next opportunity. National Rally party president Jordan Bardella, writing on X, dismissed Lecornu’s victory as the product of "horse-trading" that saved politicians’ positions "at the expense of the national interest." The spectacle of weeks of bickering and tactical maneuvering in Paris has only deepened the public’s disillusionment with the political class. As the BBC noted, many voters now see the main aim of most politicians as simply clinging to power, rather than governing for the common good.
President Macron, whose popularity has plummeted to just 14%, according to mid-October polling, is widely blamed for the crisis. His one-time adviser, Alain Minc, was quoted by the BBC as saying Macron "must now go down as the worst president of the Fifth Republic," arguing that the president’s promise to act as a bulwark against the far right has instead left the National Rally "at the gates of power." The sense of drift and dysfunction in Paris has not gone unnoticed abroad: “The Germans are petrified about what a French collapse will do to the economy. The British are petrified about the strategic implications. The Italians are laughing at us, because we always laughed at them. In America, President Trump is saying that smooth-talker Macron has got what he deserves. Only in Russia are they smiling.”
With the budget debate set to open on October 24, Lecornu faces weeks of bruising negotiations in which every line of the spending plan will be contested. The government and its allies hold fewer than 200 seats; for a majority, they will need to secure support from either the Socialists, the conservative Republicans, or both. This delicate arithmetic means that any misstep could bring the government down—if talks break down over pensions, taxes, or spending, France could find itself back at square one, facing yet another political crisis by year’s end.
The stakes could hardly be higher. For Macron, passing a credible budget without resorting to constitutional shortcuts would demonstrate that France can still be governed, even in the face of unprecedented parliamentary fragmentation. For Lecornu, it is a test of survival in a system not designed for coalition horse-trading. And for France as a whole, it is a moment of reckoning—a chance to prove that the machinery of the Fifth Republic can adapt to new political realities, or risk grinding to a halt altogether.
For now, the immediate danger has passed, but the underlying crisis remains. France’s government walks a tightrope, with every step watched closely by markets, neighbors, and its own restless citizens.