Macron enters his lame duck era

PARIS — French President Emmanuel Macron’s celebrations over the imminent passage of the 2026 budget will be short-lived. Once it’s approved, he’s going to be a lame duck until the presidential election of spring next year.

Current and former ministers, lawmakers and political aides — including three Macron allies — told POLITICO that now that the budget fight is over and the concerns of angry citizens and jittery markets are assuaged, the whole cycle of French politics will shift to campaign mode at the expense of the dirty work of lawmaking. 

First will come next month’s municipal elections, where voters in all of France’s 35,000-plus communes will elect mayors and city councils. Then all attention will flip to the race for the all-powerful presidency, Macron cannot run again due to term limits, and polls show he could be replaced by a candidate from the far-right National Rally.

“It’s the end of [Macron’s] term,” a former adviser close to Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu said of the budget’s passage.  

Gabriel Attal, Macron’s former prime minister who now leads the French president’s party, confirmed in an interview with French media last month that he told his troops the budget marked “the end” of Macron’s second term. 

“I stand by what I said,” Attal told FranceInfo. 

As president, Macron continues to exert a strong influence over foreign affairs and defense, two realms that will keep him on the world stage given the geopolitical upheaval brought on by U.S. President Donald Trump’s second term.

Domestically, however, he’s been hampered by the snap election in 2024 that delivered a hung parliament. 

Lecornu was only able to avoid being toppled over the passage of the budget, as his two immediate predecessors were, thanks to his political savvy, some compromises and a few bold decisions. These included pausing Macron’s flagship pension reform that raised the retirement age and going back on his promise not to use a constitutional backdoor to ram it through without a vote.

“Lecornu was smart enough to make the budget phase pass and end on a high note. That’s commendable, given that [former Prime Ministers Michel] Barnier and [François] Bayrou didn’t manage to do so, and he did it with considerable skill,” said a ministerial adviser who, like others quoted in this piece, was granted anonymity to speak candidly. 

But Lecornu’s decision to prioritize uncontroversial measures in the coming weeks speak to the difficulties that lie ahead.  

These priorities include defining the division of power between the central government and local authorities, and streamlining and centralizing welfare payments that are currently doled out in an ad hoc fashion. Lecornu is also planning to get to work early on France’s 2027 fiscal plans to try to prevent the third budget crisis in a row. 

“There will be a presidential election in 2027. Before then, we need to agree on a bottom line which allows the country to move forward,” government spokesperson Maud Bregeon said Thursday on Sud Radio. 

Lecornu has repeatedly stressed that his government should be disconnected from the race for president, blaming “partisan appetites” for both the budget crisis and the collapse of his 14-hour government, which was eventually replaced with a suite of less ambitious ministers.  

But it’s ironic that some French government officials and MPs are now saying the self-described warrior-monk prime minister may have vaulted himself into the realm of presidential contender with his budget win.

Mathieu Gallard, a pollster at Ipsos, said Lecornu had clearly become a more viable presidential candidate but noted that the jump from prime minister to president “is always a hard task.” 

One parliamentary leader was much less sanguine. They said the same “partisan appetites” Lecornu has long warned about will likely cost him his job before voters head to the polls to choose Macron’s successor.  

“[Lecornu] has few friends … And now that the budget has passed, every political group can have fun throwing him out of office to plant their flag before the next presidential election,” the leader said. 

Anthony Lattier, Sarah Paillou and Elisa Bertholomey contributed to this report.