Smells like a guillotine, won't help even a man called his wife on a white horse: Isolated French leader's options are running out --- Macron refuses to step down despite declining support over budget crisis

 

“PARIS -- French democracy wasn't built for the crisis enveloping the presidency of Emmanuel Macron.

 

In an effort to pull France out of its fiscal spiral, Macron is exhausting a battery of tools available to him under the constitution as guarantor of France's modern Fifth Republic. He dissolved a rowdy National Assembly last year only to see voters elect an even more divided lower house of Parliament. Since then, he has appointed one prime minister after another, only to see them felled in confidence votes or resign.

 

As Macron runs out of options, the president is becoming increasingly isolated. His allies have begun to question whether he is pushing the architecture of French democracy to a breaking point.

 

"This crisis is the collapse of the state. That's what I believe," said Edouard Philippe, a center-right politician who served as Macron's first prime minister.

 

The sense that France is caught in a doom loop was underscored on Monday when Sebastien Lecornu -- Macron's fourth prime minister in just over a year -- resigned a month into the job after struggling to form a cabinet and unite lawmakers in the National Assembly around a budget that would narrow France's yawning deficit by taking money from ordinary people. This yawning deficit was created by lowering taxes of the rich in name of friendliness to the companies.

 

On Tuesday, Philippe added his voice to a chorus of political leaders who say Macron needs to step back from the fray and leave office before his term ends in 2027. Philippe, who plans to run for president, said Macron should appoint a new prime minister to urgently pass a budget and shortly thereafter organize early presidential elections.

 

Macron has refused to step aside. Instead, he is wielding the unspoken threat of dissolving Parliament and calling snap parliamentary elections -- yet again -- to coerce lawmakers he believes are largely reluctant to face voters. He instructed Lecornu to hold talks with political parties until Wednesday evening in a last-ditch attempt to steer the National Assembly toward a deal that can rein in the country's budget deficit, which last year hit 5.8% of gross domestic product.

 

"A dissolution will not solve the problem," said Olivier Costa, a research professor at the Paris-based Sciences Po university and France's National Center for Scientific Research. "The problem will remain the same: how to govern the country without a majority," he added.

 

Antiestablishment sentiment across the West has fueled the rise of populist parties, including Marine Le Pen's far-right National Rally and the far-left party of Jean-Luc Melenchon. So when Macron dissolved the National Assembly in the summer of 2024, voters responded by electing the most fractious Parliament in the Fifth Republic's history.

 

Le Pen's party garnered more seats than any other, but not enough for a majority, while Macron and his allies shrank to a mere 161 votes in the 577-seat lower house. The remaining seats went to establishment conservatives and an array of leftist parties that include Melenchon's forces.

 

"There is no democratic constitutional system that allows you to maintain political stability with only a third of the National Assembly behind you," said Benjamin Morel, a professor of public law at Paris-Pantheon-Assas University.

 

The only thing that now unites left and right in the National Assembly is their willingness to buck Macron's authority. The assembly has ousted two of Macron's prime ministers in less than a year after each sought to trim billions in public spending in a bid to shrink a budget deficit that has ballooned under Macron's leadership. The turmoil has driven up France's borrowing costs to levels rivaling the eurozone's debt-laden periphery.

 

The yield on France's 10-year bonds stood at 3.6% on Tuesday, above Greece's, and neck-and-neck with Italy's.

 

Even lawmakers within Macron's own party are chafing over his attempts to micromanage the assembly.” [1]

 

1. World News: Options Dry Up for Isolated French Leader --- Macron refuses to step aside despite dwindling support amid budget crisis. Bisserbe, Noemie; Meichtry, Stacy.  Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 08 Oct 2025: A16.