President Emmanuel Macron has named close ally Sébastien Lecornu as new French prime minister, 24 hours after a vote of confidence ousted François Bayrou as head of his government.
Lecornu, 39, was among the favourites to take over the job, and has spent the past three years as armed forces minister, with a focus on France’s response to Russia’s war in Ukraine.
In a statement the Elysée Palace said he had been given the task of consulting political parties with the aim of adopting France’s next budget.
Bayrou had visited the president hours earlier to hand in his resignation, paving the way for Lecornu to become the fifth prime minister of Macron’s second term as president.
Lecornu will face the same challenges as his predecessor, including getting a cost-cutting budget past parliament without a majority.
France has a spiralling public debt, which hit €3.3tn (£2.8tn) earlier this year and represents 114% of the country’s economic output or GDP.
Bayrou had proposed €44bn in budget cuts, and his decision to put his plans to a vote of confidence was always going to fail. In the end France’s National Assembly decided to oust his government by 364 votes to 194.
Lecornu’s appointment has already been condemned by parties on both the left and right, an indication of the difficulties he will face.
Jean-Luc Mélenchon of the radical left France Unbowed said his appointment meant that nothing had changed and it was time for Macron’s departure from the presidency.
On the far right, Marine Le Pen said the president was firing “the final cartridge of Macronism, from his bunker along with his little circle of loyalists”.
However, centrist former Prime Minister Édouard Philippe thought Lecornu was a good choice as he had learned a lot as defence minister.
“I’ve known him for a long time because he was elected like me in Normandy,” the Horizons party leader told TF1 TV. “He knows how to debate and he’ll need this talent for debate and listening to find a deal in circumstances he knows are pretty complicated.”
Another centrist, Marc Fesneau from the MoDem party of ousted Prime Minister François Bayrou, called on every political force to reach a compromise – “for the stability of the country and its recovery, especially its budget”.
On Friday, the credit agency Fitch will reassess France’s debts and could make its borrowing costs higher if it lowers its rating from AA-.
More immediately, a grassroots movement called Bloquons Tout – “Let’s Block Everything” – is planning widespread anti-government protests on Wednesday and authorities are planning to deploy 80,000 police.
