taking office<\/a> and hours after naming a cabinet, further deepening the country\u2019s long-running political crisis.<\/p>\nThe French presidency said in a statement on Monday that President Emmanuel Macron has accepted his close ally\u2019s resignation.<\/p>\n
Appointed nearly a month ago, Lecornu had come under increasing pressure in recent weeks as he struggled to pass a budget through France\u2019s fractured parliament amid a debt crisis.<\/p>\n
He named his ministers on Sunday evening but quit his post hours later, making his government one of the shortest lived in French history.<\/p>\n
The new cabinet had been set to hold its first meeting on Monday afternoon, but after Lecornu\u2019s promises to \u201cbreak\u201d with the strategy of his unpopular predecessor Francois Bayrou, the lineup of new ministers angered both his opponents and allies alike. Many figures in Lecornu\u2019s cabinet had served in the previous government.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was ready to compromise, but each political party wanted the other political party to adopt its entire programme,\u201d Lecornu said outside the prime minister\u2019s office.<\/p>\n
The French Parliament has been divided between far-right and far-left blocs since Macron announced snap elections in 2024. Lecornu was Macron\u2019s fifth prime minister in the past two years, and his sudden resignation sparked opposition calls for the president to step down and a new election to be held.<\/p>\n
Marine Le Pen, a leading far-right figure and member of the National Rally party, the largest in parliament, who called Lecornu\u2019s cabinet \u201cpathetic\u201d, told local media, \u201cThe only wise decision is to return to the polls.\u201d That message was echoed by party leader Jordan Bardella, who said, \u201cNational Rally will be ready to assume its responsibilities.\u201d<\/p>\n
The leader of the far-left France Unbowed party, Jean-Luc Melenchon, also called for Macron to step down while Francois-Xavier Bellamy, who heads the much smaller right-wing Republicans party, which worked with Macron to staff his cabinet, said his party had nothing \u201cto fear from a dissolution\u201d of parliament.<\/p>\n
The prospect of France not passing a budget has caused financial jitters. The benchmark CAC 40 index of blue chip stocks dropped more than 2 percent after the news of Lecornu\u2019s resignation broke.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"French President Emmanuel Macron accepts resignation of newly appointed prime minister after criticism over cabinet lineup. Published On…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":61917,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[21158,2024,1221,42,43,135,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-61916","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-emmanuel-macron","9":"tag-europe","10":"tag-france","11":"tag-headlines","12":"tag-news","13":"tag-politics","14":"tag-top-news","15":"tag-top-stories","16":"tag-topnews","17":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61916","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=61916"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61916\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/61917"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=61916"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=61916"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=61916"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}