Sébastien Lecornu hopes delaying changes until after 2027 election will win him enough support to survive
France’s prime minister, Sébastien Lecornu, has suspended Emmanuel Macron’s flagship 2023 pension changes until after the 2027 presidential election in the hope of winning over enough Socialist deputies to survive a no-confidence vote.
The far-right National Rally (RN) and radical left France Unbowed (LFI) have already filed no-confidence motions for later this week that Lecornu will lose without the support of the Socialist party (PS), which has also warned it could submit its own motion.
The prime minister, who resigned last Monday but was reappointed by the French president on Friday, faces a struggle to pass an austerity budget for next year through France’s deeply divided parliament, in which no single group has a majority.
He made the pension announcement – widely seen as an acknowledgment by Macron that freezing the change, which raised the age of retirement in stages from 62 to 64, was the only way to ensure Lecornu’s survival – in parliament on Tuesday.
