French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu has resigned less than a month after his appointment, risking further fracturing within an already divided government. Lecornu announced he was stepping down on Monday morning, and the move was swiftly accepted by President Emmanuel Macron.
The shock decision comes less than 24 hours after Lecornu unveiled his new cabinet, which received criticism across the political spectrum. The first cabinet meeting was scheduled to take place at 4 p.m., local time, on Monday. Now, uncertainty looms as to what lies ahead.
In a national address on Monday morning, Lecornu, the seventh Prime Minister to serve under the eight-year presidency of Macron, outlined the difficulties he has faced in bringing the French government together in agreement on a national budget.
“There is always the feeling that the line is moving back each time we move forward,” said Lecornu in reference to negotiations on key issues including pensions, tax, and matters related to unemployment figures.
Lecornu, an ally of Macron and a member of the President’s Renaissance party, said that his resignation comes in the face of three core issues.
He claimed there is a “profound rupture” amongst parliament members, some of whom “refuse to do their job as parliamentarians” in discussions over the budget and subsequent votes on amendments. He also accused parties within the government of continuing “to adopt a posture as if they all had an absolute majority in the National Assembly.” Lecornu went on to say the “reawakening of some partisan appetites” within the government had disrupted its function.
Per his address, Lecornu has refused to invoke Article 49.3 of the French constitution, which allows the Prime Minister to push a bill through the National Assembly, France’s lower house of Parliament, without a vote.
TIME has reached out to the French government for comment.
Lecornu was notably the only minister to have remained in government since Macron was first elected in 2017, a sign of the strong working relationship between himself and the French President. Therefore, his resignation has prompted reactions ranging from shock to confusion.
The cabinet restructure did attract harsh criticism over the weekend. Minister of Interior and politician from the center-right Republican party Bruno Retailleau said that the new cabinet did not reflect the promised “break” in parliament made by Lecornu, and that he would be meeting with party members Monday to discuss the “political situation created by this announcement.”
Leader of the far-right National Rally party Jordan Bardella said: “We had clearly told the Prime Minister: it’s either a break or censorship. The government announced this evening, made up of the last Macronists clinging to the raft of the Medusa, decidedly has everything of continuity, absolutely nothing of the break that the French are expecting.”
Bardella and Marine Le Pen, who was convicted in April after an investigation into a sprawling embezzlement scheme, are now calling for a snap general election in the wake of Lecornu’s resignation.
François-Xavier Bellamy, a member of The Republicans in France, is leading the renewed criticism against Macron’s government, specifically its failure to finalize a budget.
“We are here to serve the country, not to serve as a crutch to a political system incapable of renewing itself,” he told reporters in reaction to Lecornu’s resignation.
Another French member of the European Parliament, Marion Marechal, who is also the niece of Marine Le Pen, laid the blame with Macron, and urged him to “take responsibility and resign.”
Leader of the left-wing La France Insoumise party, Jean-Luc Melenchon, also called for Macron’s resignation. “We are at an impasse. As long as we delay in addressing the heart of the problem, everything will only get worse,” he said.
President of the council for the Hauts-de-France in the north of the country, Xavier Bertand, said Monday that he would request for The Republicans to leave the newly-formed cabinet as a show of protest.
