President Macron appoints Sebastien Lecornu as France's new prime minister, seventh of his term

A day after François Bayrou lost a vote of confidence and was forced to resign, President Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday appointed his longtime loyalist Sébastien Lecornu, who has served as defence minister since 2022, as France’s new prime minister and asked him to form a government. Lecornu, 39, has been serving as defence minister since Macron's re-election in 2022 and has been part of every government since 2017. Before that, he was a member of the conservative Les Républicains party.

In a statement announcing the nomination, the French presidency said Macron had tasked Lecornu “with consulting the political parties represented in Parliament with a view to adopting a budget for the nation and constructing the agreements essential for the decisions of the coming months.”

“Following these discussions, it will be up to the new prime minister to propose a government to the president of the Republic,” the presidency said.

Lecornu, the youngest defence minister in French history, was the architect of a military buildup through 2030, spurred by Russia’s war in Ukraine. In 2019, he was tasked with organising Macron’s “great national debate,” a response to the Yellow Vests protest movement.

Far-right leader Le Pen criticises Lecornu’s appointment

Far-right leader Marine Le Pen criticised Lecornu’s appointment as prime minister. In a post on X, she wrote, “The president is firing the last shot of Macronism, bunkered down with his small circle of loyalists.”

Pen, the head of the Rassemblement National party, also predicted “inevitable future parliamentary elections” and said “the prime minister will be called Jordan Bardella.”

Jean-Luc Mélenchon, leader of the La France Insoumise leftist party, again called for “the departure of Macron” and said in a post on X, “Macron’s response to Bayrou’s overthrow” was, “From now, on it’s exactly like before.”

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Lecornu seventh prime minister under Macron

On Monday, Bayrou suffered a crushing loss in the confidence vote he had himself called, plunging France into fresh uncertainty and leaving Macron with the task of finding the seventh premier of his mandate.

In the voting, 364 MPs in the Assemblée Nationale said they had no confidence in the government, while just 194 gave it their confidence.

Lecornu becomes the seventh prime minister under Macron since his 2017 election and the fifth since 2022. Bayrou’s predecessor, Michel Barnier, was removed by a no-confidence vote in December.