Overview

• Élysée officials confirmed that President Emmanuel Macron accepted Sébastien Lecornu’s resignation four weeks after his appointment.
• Ministers continue only as caretakers and cannot advance major legislation, leaving key budget decisions on hold.
• Lecornu blamed entrenched party ambitions and a lack of compromise for the collapse, following a clash over cabinet posts.
• Républicains leader and interior minister Bruno Retailleau threatened to pull his party from the alliance, with anger focused on Bruno Le Maire’s surprise move to the defense portfolio and demands for greater conservative representation.
• Opposition leaders urged snap elections or even Macron’s resignation as markets fell—Paris’s CAC 40 dropped roughly 1.5% to 2%—against a backdrop of a contested austerity push and public debt near €3.3 trillion.