French Government Collapse
Marie Yvernat
October 3, 2025

France's government has collapsed once again, threatening to plunge the country and Europe into a deep political and economic crisis. Hyper-partisanship, mass strikes, and the looming debt crisis raise doubts about the political future of President Emmanuel Macron and the Fifth Republic more widely. President Macron responded by promoting Defense Minister Sébastien Lecornu to the office of Prime Minister. But can the next government turn a page, or will France continue going down a spiral that brings far-right firebrand Marine Le Pen to the presidency by 2027?

Macron's choice to name a new Prime Minister of the same right-leaning centrist bloc as the one whose government was just ousted by a comfortable majority seems self-destructive. Unless thirty-nine-year-old Sebastien Lecornu can do what his predecessor couldn't and gather enough parliamentary support to pass a budget that stabilizes France's overspending, another dissolution followed by subsequent snap elections will be inevitable. And if that happens, the polls are clear – the odds are largely in favor of Marine Le Pen's Rassemblement National.

Why can Macron, who himself rose from the ranks of the Socialist Party not bring himself to name a moderate figure on the left to appease tensions with parliament? Is this pure hubris or stubborn conviction? Is the French President risking handing the country over to the far-right, or does he have a plan this time? France's finances are in deep trouble: its deficit has reached 5.8%, almost double the European limit, the debt levels are unprecedented, and growth is slowing, dropping France behind Romania and Poland in the EU's ranking. To steer the ship, now ex-Prime Minister Bayrou proposed a strict budget plan for 2026 to save 44 billion euros and stabilize the situation – which would have been a welcome development in a tense geopolitical climate calling for European strategic autonomy and increased defense spending. Measures in Bayrou's austerity program, partly inspired by Mario Draghi's report, also included the cancellation of two public holidays, a one-year halt in social benefit's indexation on inflation, and massive investment of European funds in French tech companies. Trying to get this budget through ended up costing Bayrou his job. The question now is whether Lecornu will be a better negotiator than he was and convince the various groups in the Assemblée that avoiding a Greek scenario is more important than political squabbles?

What happened last week?

On 31 August, then-Prime Minister François Bayrou pulled the trigger on his own government by calling a vote of confidence and tying his own survival to that of his controversial austerity budget. Monday, almost two-thirds of parliamentarians denied Bayrou their support, making him the fifth Prime Minister to have to step down since 2022. In keeping with traditions, the far-left is calling for Macron's destitution and nation-wide strikes against the government, while the far-right sees a renewed government crisis as their golden ticket to power.

Why is this the second government collapse in a year?

To answer this, we need to go back a little more than one year ago. On 9 June, 2024, Emmanuel Macron shocked the nation by dissolving the National Assembly for the first time since 1997. Why he went forth with this incredibly risky move, in a climate as unfavorable to him and against most of his inner circle's advice, is still unclear. To this day's Macron's choice to dissolve has turned out a total miscalculation, but he had to try something to overcome a gridlocked parliament since 2022.

While reelected for president with a slim majority as a barrage against Marine Le Pen in May 2022, Macron could not then secure a parliamentary majority and his successive Prime Ministers have failed to find compromise bill by bill – each vote in parliament turning into a vote on Macron's leadership rather than one on the policy proposal at hand. Indeed, Macron has been a polarizing figure from the start, deemed "president of the rich", criticized for a perceived contempt for the working class. His attacks on some of the central cornerstones of the French welfare state such as early retirement and unemployment benefits have granted him a neoliberal reputation, which the extremes have instrumentalized to their own benefits, leading to heightened partisanship and polarization.

It came to such paralysis on the retirement question that the president adopted a nothing-to-lose mentality and tried to steal a majority by dissolving the parliament, using the unprecedently high results for the far right at the European elections as an excuse to do so. His hope? A repetition of the 2022 scenario, Macron as the responsible Republican choice against populist Marine Le Pen. A flaky strategy that could have worked maybe five years prior, but with anti-macron sentiment running so high in the country, he ended up cementing a multipolar assembly, driving him even farther from the absolute majority he was seeking. The snap elections resulted in the far right doubling their seats, sparking an 'unnatural' union of the left and slashing Macron's own centrist camp. To top it all off, when the results of said elections did not go his way, Macron repeatedly named technocrats like Michel Barnier, François Bayrou and now Sebastien Lecornu to lead the government rather than figures emerging from majority groups - causing the cycle of government collapses we have seen. To put it simply, since the dissolution, the French parliament is in a situation of complete deadlock with the fringes holding more seats than the governing coalition.

What now?

With Lecornu in office, two paths are now open – neither of which are reassuring:

The path of compromise, finally: Somehow, young Sebastien Lecornu manages to mend the broken pots and push through a 2026 budget. To succeed in doing this, he will probably need to compromise significantly to the left, which will not fix France's persistent financial problem and more likely delay a governability issue that will resurface at the next presidential elections in 2027.

The path of dissolution 2.0. Lecornu fails to negotiate like his predecessors and is ousted through a no-confidence motion from both the right and left, and Macron is forced to dissolve the National Assembly once again. With high levels of social unrest and dissatisfaction, the Republican barrage against the far right is less likely to hold this time around (just yesterday, respected socialist leader Raphaël Glucksmann just announced he would not back Melenchon again in case of snap elections). A combination of a fragmented left and a virulent anti-Macron social mood risk handing an absolute majority on a platter for Le Pen's Rassemblement National.

The second scenario would result in a cohabitation government, the first since the early 2000s and would most certainly lead to strained governance where the president and the government's agenda clash. Such instability would be unwelcome in a time where France's allies look to it for leadership on geopolitical issues, especially with the upcoming UN General Assembly, the issue of Palestine recognition, and the potential deployment of European troops in Ukraine.

Is the Fifth Republic nearing its end?

Is the problem only caused by the political players the French public has been served with, or is this a wider systemic issue? At the rate France is plunging from one crisis into the next, the raison d'être of the Fifth Republic is being called into question. Created in 1958 to solve the cyclical instability of the parliamentary Fourth Republic, the semi-presidential model championed by Charles de Gaulle led to long periods of welcome stability. But France has not been spared by the radical transformation of politics over the last decade, and the rise of extremes and distrust of political elites has led to more government instability than ever before since De Gaulle took over at the end of World War II.

The Fourth Republic was a parliamentary system with a weak president where governments would rarely last longer than six months. To curb this trend, De Gaulle introduced a semi-presidential system which entailed shifting a lot of control over the legislative agenda from the parliament to the government. Under the Fifth Republic however, the Prime Minister becomes the de-facto initiator of policy, and parliament's role is to debate and decide whether to approve those initiatives. Specific tools are also at the disposition of the government to allow it to circumvent the parliament in case of deep parliamentary disagreement: the controversial 49.3 article. Overall, the aim of this new Republic was to favor government stability to parliamentary deliberation.

But this system was built to bring stability in a traditional left vs. right landscape that no longer exists in France, one centered around two parties, where the balance would tip in one direction or the other depending on the socio-economic climate. Until recently, this equilibrium was threatened by a singular serious extreme, the far-right. Now, with Melenchon's rise in 2016 as a response to Macron's perceived neo-liberalism, and the rapid politicization of Gen Z, the lines have been redrawn and what is left of the old system is weak mainstream parties facing two powerful extremes. What is essentially Macron's failed creation of a strong center has made space for those radical groups to take up more space than ever before. The Fifth Republic was founded for a top-down political landscape, and a new constitutional model might be needed to adapt to a much more horizontal reality.

A difficult few months ahead, but better now than in 2027?

We can speculate endlessly on what will or will not happen, but the outlook for France in the next few months is surely a bleak one. Its financial troubles will not go away and will likely worsen, hope that some compromise between Macron and the powerful groups in parliament can be found is slim, and in the meantime, frustrated voters are on the brink of launching a wave of new 'yellow jackets' protests.

To end on a more constructive note, we may be reaching the final peak of a crisis. France's public finances have been a concern for decades, and while the country keeps borrowing and spending, once praised public services like free access to hospital have started to crumble. Mismanagement of public funds and inefficient allocation have crippled the country, and external factors like the Covid pandemic have allowed policy makers to keep burying their heads in the sand. Ultimately, a breaking point was coming, and it might be better that France suffers the worst of consequences now rather than at the end of Macron's second term with the far right at the doorstep of the Elysée. In the unlikely but plausible event that the ship is steered and concrete solutions are found in the next two years, a rock-bottom followed by a respite might help avoid a Le Pen or Bardella win in 2027.