Macron In Precarious Situation

By
Gregory McMullen
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France’s political center of gravity has slipped so far off balance that it’s no longer clear whether the system itself can hold. On Thursday, Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu barely survived a pair of no-confidence votes in the National Assembly — his second near-fall in just two weeks — leaving France in a condition that can only be described as constitutional vertigo. With President Emmanuel Macron clinging to power via backroom bargains and fragile alliances, the opposition has now decided to go for the jugular: impeachment.

The failed no-confidence vote — 271 out of the required 289 votes — was as close as it gets in France’s fractured lower house. And yet it was just enough for Lecornu to avoid becoming the shortest-serving Prime Minister in modern French history again, having already set the record once last week when his government collapsed after just 12 hours. This time, survival was purchased at a price: the Macron-aligned coalition struck a desperate deal with the Socialist Party, offering delays to unpopular pension reforms in exchange for their support. That move alienated their own allies and enraged the rest of the left, especially Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s La France Insoumise (LFI), who accused the Socialists of betrayal.


But what makes this moment truly combustible is not just the vote itself, but what it signals: the complete paralysis of the Fifth Republic’s parliamentary system. Emmanuel Macron, a president without a majority and without a clear mandate, has now presided over nine governments in under eight years — a stunning display of churn and fragility. His once-celebrated centrism has become a political dead zone, surrounded by two deeply polarized forces: Marine Le Pen’s National Rally on the right, and Mélenchon’s radical left coalition on the other.

Ironically, both camps — who agree on almost nothing — now share one conclusion: this version of the French Republic has run its course.

Marine Le Pen’s National Rally, the largest single party in the Assembly, refuses to cooperate with the left to bring down Macron, even as they openly call his rule illegitimate. Le Pen has called the current crisis not a failure of government, but a failure of politicians — a rigged system keeping out the populist tide. Jordan Bardella, her heir apparent, accused Macron of sacrificing “the national interest” to cling to power through “bargaining.” Meanwhile, the left, blocked at every turn by internal division and external sabotage, has decided to escalate. With their censure motion defeated, LFI declared they would now seek to impeach Macron directly.


Impeachment in France is rare, and enormously difficult to execute — but in this environment, it’s a politically potent threat. A symbolic act, perhaps, but one that reflects a deeper truth: the current constitutional order is no longer capable of producing stable governance. The very structure of the National Assembly, split three ways among irreconcilable factions, has created a deadlock that no election, so far, has been able to break.

And therein lies the ultimate irony: Macron, trying to outmaneuver Le Pen by calling early elections in July 2024, may have accidentally hastened the collapse of the system he’s fought to preserve. His deal with the far-left to block the right backfired, delivering a hung parliament with no coalition capable of passing a budget — a dangerous game for a nation already teetering on the edge of a sovereign debt crisis.


Now, France finds itself careening toward what some are calling a “bloodless revolution”: not in the streets, but in the constitution itself. With no governing majority and no path forward under current rules, the idea of a Sixth Republic — with a new electoral system, a rebalanced executive, or even a more parliamentary model — is no longer fringe fantasy. It’s entering the mainstream of political discourse.

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