France’s prime minister Sebastien Lecornu has resigned – after less than a month in the job.
French President Emmanuel Macron has accepted his resignation, the Elysee Palace said.
Mr Lecornu’s resignation comes just hours after he appointed his cabinet – and after political rivals threatened to topple his government.
He announced on Sunday that he had appointed his ministers, with the new cabinet set to hold its first meeting on Monday afternoon.
But the line-up had angered political allies and opponents alike, who either criticised that it was too right-wing or not right-wing enough, raising questions over how long it could last in a fragmented parliament where no party holds a majority.
In his resignation speech, Mr Lecornu said political parties in France were all behaving as if they had their own majority in parliament.
Mr Lecornu, 39, an ally of Mr Macron, was the seventh prime minister appointed by the president – and the fifth in just two years.
His sudden resignation on Monday morning after just 27 days in office was unexpected and unprecedented, and resulted in more turmoil amid France’s political crisis.
Since Mr Macron was re-elected in 2022, the parliament has been unstable, and the president’s decision to call a snap election last year further deepened the crisis by producing an even more fragmented parliament.
After Mr Lecornu resigned, Jean-Luc Melenchon, the leader of far-left France Unbowed, said his party was calling for the impeachment of Mr Macron, while the far-right National Rally immediately urged Mr Macron to call another snap election or resign.
“There can be no return to stability without a return to the polls and the dissolution of the national assembly,” National Rally leader Jordan Bardella said.
Europe correspondent
This resignation has come kind of completely out of the blue – and there doesn’t seem to be an obvious reason for it.
Only 13 hours ago, Lecornu tweeted that he had successfully formed a new government and spoke about the challenges facing that government to pass a much-needed budget, something that his predecessors failed to do.
Now, early this morning, his resignation was handed down and accepted by President Emmanuel Macron, leaving Macron in a real crisis because he is going through prime ministers, very quickly, too quickly, really, for his position to remain stable for much longer.
You will now get some very strong calls, and they are becoming quite credible calls, from Marine Le Pen’s party National Rally, to hold parliamentary elections.
They think that if parliamentary elections were held, then they would do very well in them, and all of the polls suggest that would be the case.
And I think you will also find that they have sympathy for that position from the socialists and those on the far left as well.
So Macron is now going to be under immense pressure to call parliamentary elections.
I think he will also come under pressure to stand down himself, because every time he appoints a new prime minister, it fails.
It seems as though he is running out of room and time to keep that tactic, because it is a tactic that is not working for him.
Mr Lecornu’s resignation also resulted in French stocks and the euro dropping sharply.
French banks were leading a financial market sell-off, with the Societe Generale down by more than 6% on the CAC 40 in the moments after the announcement, while BNP Paribas and Credit Agricole were also sharply lower.
The index was 1.5% in the red.
The euro also fell back against sterling and the dollar, while French government borrowing costs, reflected on bond markets, hit levels last seen almost a month ago when the country was back in the same political stalemate.
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