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France’s premier Sébastien Lecornu has chosen former industry minister Roland Lescure to be his new finance minister, as he leans on familiar faces from previous governments to pass a budget in the fractured national assembly.
Lescure, an early backer of President Emmanuel Macron in 2017, will be tasked with delivering Lecornu’s budget for 2026, after the previous prime minister François Bayrou was toppled over his approach to reducing the deficit.
Lecornu had promised a “rupture” with previous Macron governments but two-thirds of the 18 ministers announced on Sunday came from the Bayrou cabinet, while many new arrivals featured in earlier Macron administrations.
Lescure, a former executive of La Caisse, one of the largest pension funds in North America, entered politics in 2017 as a deputy with Macron’s centrist En Marche party and served as a minister in Élisabeth Borne and Gabriel Attal’s governments.
Lecornu has also turned to another former Macron finance minister, Bruno Lemaire, to take on the post of defence minister. Bruno Retailleau, head of the rightwing Républicains party, was reinstated as interior minister, while Borne regained her post at education.
Lecornu will name a second slate of deputy ministers after he delivers a general policy speech on Tuesday, when the opposition could call a no-confidence vote.
“These ministers will have the difficult mission of giving the country a budget before December 31 and serving France,” Lecornu said on X on Sunday night. “They have accepted it, knowing that they will have to find compromises with the opposition.”
The new prime minister had embarked on a broad range of discussions with other parties, trade unions and business representatives since his appointment by Macron last month.
He has already rejected some of Bayrou’s least popular measures, including plans to abolish two bank holidays.
But successfully passing a budget looks an equally tricky task for Lecornu as it proved for his immediate predecessors, Michel Barnier and Bayrou.
France’s parliament has been deeply divided since the 2024 parliamentary elections split it into three blocks: the far-right Rassemblement National, the left, and the centrist and right-wing parties backing the government.
Lecornu has said he will make only minor adjustments to the overall deficit reduction targets set by Bayrou, telling Le Parisien newspaper last week that he would allow the deficit to reach 4.7 per cent by 2026, compared to the earlier rate of 4.6 per cent.
However, in one sign of a new approach, Lecornu said on Friday he would not use a constitutional clause that enables the government to force through legislation such as the budget without a vote in parliament, satisfying a demand of left-wing parties. “That is the true rupture,” he said.
But Lecornu and Lescure will have to continue to negotiate budgetary measures with the left-wing Socialist party, whose 66 deputies are a swing block in the 577-member parliament.
Lecornu has ruled out Socialist demands such as suspending pension reforms to raise the retirement age to 64 and a large new tax on the ultra-wealthy.
In an interview published on Saturday evening by Le Parisien, Socialist party chief Olivier Faure said the measures put forward by Lecornu were a “copy paste” of those proposed by Bayrou and the Socialists were prepared to call a no-confidence vote if they were not satisfied by Tuesday’s proposals.