The sudden resignation of France's prime minister — the country's fifth in two years — has put President Emmanuel Macron in a bind.
Sébastien Lecornu resigned on Monday, just 14 hours after unveiling his new cabinet and less than a month after he was appointed PM.
It's become the latest saga in a period of almost ceaseless political uncertainty since Mr Macron dissolved the National Assembly in June 2024, triggering legislative elections that stacked the parliament's lower house with his opponents.
Here's a closer look at the unprecedented political drama that's been roiling France since then.
A 14-hour government collapses
When Mr Lecornu tendered his resignation on Monday morning, he pulled the rug from under the new cabinet that he'd named less than 14 hours earlier.
Agnès Pannier-Runacher, the newly reappointed Minister for Ecology and one of Mr Macron's loyal supporters, posted on X: "I despair of this circus."
With ministers out of a job before they'd even had a chance to settle in, the collapse was a bad look for Mr Macron.
It reinforced the impression the French leader — who famously described himself as "the master of the clocks," firmly in control, on his way to winning the presidency for the first time in 2017 — is no longer in command of France's political agenda.
Perhaps more damaging for Mr Macron were the reasons Mr Lecornu gave for his resignation.
He explained that the job he was given less than a month ago, after the previous prime minister was tossed out by a National Assembly vote, had proven to be impossible.
Mr Lecornu said three weeks of negotiations with parties from across the political spectrum, unions and business leaders had failed to build consensus behind France's top domestic priority: agreeing on next year's budget.
"Being prime minister is a difficult task, doubtless even a bit harder at the moment, but one cannot be prime minister when the conditions aren't fulfilled," Mr Lecornu said.
Why does France have a president and a prime minister?
France has a semi-presidential system of government, with power shared between the president and prime minister.
Every five years, the French people elect a president, who then appoints a prime minister — which also requires the parliament's approval.
While the president's domain is foreign policy and defence, the prime minister handles domestic affairs.
Luc Rouban, a political science researcher at Sciences Po University in Paris, says it's unlikely Mr Macron will resign despite the internal instability.
"The central institution remains the president of the Republic ... he remains the leader on international affairs," he said.
No tradition of coalitions
When the snap 2024 legislative elections called by Mr Macron backfired and delivered a hung parliament, he believed his centrist camp could continue to govern effectively.
With no stable majority, they needed to build alliances in the National Assembly.
But the 577-seat chamber has broadly been split into three main blocs — left, center and far-right — and none with enough seats to form a government alone.
France, unlike Germany, the Netherlands and some other countries in Europe, doesn't have a tradition of political coalitions governing together.
Mr Macron's political opponents, particularly those on the far-left and far-right, have repeatedly teamed up against the president's prime ministers despite their own ideological differences.
The French leader's minority governments have toppled one after another, with Gabriel Attal, Michel Barnier, François Bayrou and now Mr Lecornu falling since September 2024.
Any successor Mr Macron chooses could be on similarly shaky ground.
Another dissolution possible
The alternative for Mr Macron would be dissolving parliament again, ceding to pressure from the far-right in particular for another unscheduled cycle of legislative elections.
Mr Macron has previously ruled out resigning himself, vowing to see out his second and last presidential term to its end in 2027.
But new elections for the National Assembly could be fraught with risk for the French leader.
The far-right National Rally party of Marine Le Pen, already the largest single party, could come out on top, an outcome that Mr Macron has long sought to avoid.
Mr Macron's unpopularity could also deliver a crushing defeat to his centrist camp, giving him even less sway in parliament than he has now.
Or France could get more of the same political deadlock and turmoil.
AP
