French President Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday appointed Sebastien Lecornu, a 39-year-old loyalist and former conservative rising star who backed his 2017 campaign, as prime minister, signaling his intent to stick with pro-business reforms despite leading a minority government.
Macron was forced to appoint a fifth prime minister in less than two years after parliament ousted Francois Bayrou nine months into the role over his plans for taming the country's ballooning debt.
In handing the job to Lecornu, Macron risks alienating the centre-left Socialist Party and leaves the president and his government depending on Marine Le Pen's far-right National Rally for support in parliament.
Lecornu's immediate priority will be to forge a consensus on a budget for 2026, a task that proved the undoing of Bayrou, who had pushed for aggressive spending cuts to rein in a deficit standing at nearly double the EU ceiling of 3% of GDP.
The political upheaval this week lays bare deepening turmoil in France that is weakening the euro zone's second-biggest economy as it sinks deeper into a debt quagmire.
