On a blustery October day in Paris, the city’s iconic boulevards were once again filled with the chants and banners of union-led protesters. The demonstration, held in central Paris on October 2, 2025, was just the latest eruption in a wave of strikes and street protests that have rocked France for months. As reported by Bloomberg, the unrest is a visible symptom of a much deeper political crisis engulfing President Emmanuel Macron and the French Fifth Republic itself.
France, a nation with a deep history of political upheaval and reinvention, now finds itself staring down a constitutional conundrum. The Fifth Republic, established in 1958 by Charles de Gaulle to bring stability after years of parliamentary chaos, is now being tested as never before. Macron, who once styled himself as a modern-day de Gaulle, is facing an unraveling of the very system his political hero built.
The immediate spark for the turmoil is France’s yawning budget deficit, which stood at 5.8% as of October 7, 2025, according to The Wall Street Journal. Macron’s repeated attempts to rein in public spending have met fierce resistance, not only from the streets but also from a fractured National Assembly. The president has cycled through a dizzying number of prime ministers—four in just over a year—with each successive appointment failing to secure the parliamentary support needed to pass critical fiscal reforms.
The most recent casualty was Sébastien Lecornu, Macron’s fourth prime minister in little more than a year. Lecornu resigned on October 7, a mere month after taking office, citing his inability to form a cabinet and unite lawmakers around a budget that would narrow the deficit. As reported by The Wall Street Journal, Macron’s response was to instruct Lecornu to continue talks with political parties until Wednesday evening, in a last-ditch effort to broker a deal. Yet, the sense of crisis only deepened, with former prime minister Édouard Philippe declaring, “This crisis is the collapse of the state. That’s what I believe.”
Philippe, who served as Macron’s first prime minister and now has his own presidential ambitions, went further, publicly urging Macron to step down before his term ends in 2027. He argued that Macron should appoint a new prime minister to urgently pass a budget and then organize early presidential elections. Macron, for his part, has refused to consider resignation. Instead, he has wielded the threat of dissolving parliament and calling for snap elections to pressure lawmakers—though many, as The Wall Street Journal notes, are reluctant to face voters again so soon.
The roots of the current impasse go back to the summer of 2024, when Macron dissolved the National Assembly in hopes of breaking a legislative logjam. The gamble backfired spectacularly. Rather than producing a workable majority, voters delivered the most divided lower house in the history of the Fifth Republic. Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally won more seats than any other party but fell short of a majority, while Macron’s centrist coalition was reduced to just 161 seats in the 577-seat chamber. The rest of the assembly was split among establishment conservatives and leftist groups led by Jean-Luc Mélenchon.
This fractious landscape has made governing all but impossible. As Benjamin Morel, a professor of public law at Paris-Panthéon-Assas University, put it to The Wall Street Journal: “There is no democratic constitutional system that allows you to maintain political stability with only a third of the National Assembly behind you.” The only thing uniting the left and right, it seems, is opposition to Macron. The assembly has toppled two of his prime ministers in less than a year, each time in response to unpopular spending cuts intended to shrink the deficit.
The consequences have rippled far beyond the walls of parliament. The ongoing political uncertainty has driven up France’s borrowing costs, with the yield on 10-year government bonds reaching 3.6% on October 7—higher than Greece’s and nearly equal to Italy’s, according to The Wall Street Journal. This financial pressure only adds urgency to the need for fiscal reform, but the political will to enact such measures remains elusive.
Meanwhile, Macron’s own allies are growing restless. Gabriel Attal, who leads Macron’s centrist party, has criticized the president for trying to micromanage the assembly and for appointing prime ministers with narrow political bases, rather than allowing parliamentary parties to negotiate a consensus candidate. “I don’t understand the decisions of the president anymore. There was the dissolution and since then there’s been decisions that suggest a relentless desire to stay in control,” Attal said, as quoted by The Wall Street Journal.
The public, too, is making its voice heard. The Daily Sun reported on October 9 that the strikes and protests roiling France are not only directed at Macron but also at his yet-to-be-named new prime minister. As of that date, Macron was expected to appoint a new head of government within 48 hours, but few expected the change to quell the anger in the streets or resolve the deeper political deadlock.
Olivier Costa, a research professor at Sciences Po and France’s National Center for Scientific Research, summed up the dilemma: “A dissolution will not solve the problem. The problem will remain the same: how to govern the country without a majority.” It’s a grim assessment, but one that reflects the reality facing France today. The Fifth Republic’s constitutional design—meant to provide strong presidential leadership backed by a stable parliamentary majority—now seems out of step with a political landscape fragmented by antiestablishment sentiment and the decline of the old party system.
For Macron, the personal toll is becoming ever more apparent. In early October, just after Lecornu’s resignation, he was seen walking alone by the River Seine, his bodyguards trailing at a respectful distance. It was a striking image of isolation for a president who once commanded the political center with ease.
As France looks ahead, the choices are stark. Macron could attempt yet another dissolution of parliament, risking further electoral upheaval. He might try to broker a grand coalition, though mutual distrust among parties makes this a daunting task. Or he could heed calls to step aside and allow early presidential elections, a move that would mark an extraordinary admission of defeat but might offer a path out of the current impasse.
One thing is clear: the crisis shaking France is not just about personalities or policies. It is a test of the resilience and adaptability of the Fifth Republic itself—a system forged in the fires of past crises, now facing perhaps its greatest challenge yet.
