French PM survives first of two no-confidence votes on day of reckoning

French Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu survived the first of two no-confidence votes in parliament on Thursday, after winning crucial backing from the Socialist Party thanks to his pledge to suspend President Emmanuel Macron’s contested pension reform.

The motion presented by the hard-left France Unbowed party secured 271 votes, short of the 289 votes needed to bring down Lecornu’s week-old government.

A second vote, tabled by the far-right National Rally, is expected within the hour and also looks certain to be defeated.

Lecornu’s offer to mothball the pensions reform until after the 2027 presidential election helped sway the Socialists, giving the government a lifeline in the deeply fragmented National Assembly.

Despite the reprieve, the vote has underscored the fragility of Macron’s administration midway through his final term.

LECORNU FACES ARDUOUS BUDGET NEGOTIATIONS

By putting the pension reform on the chopping block, Lecornu threatens to kill off one of Macron's main economic legacies at a time when France's public finances are in a perilous state, leaving the president with little in the way of domestic achievements after eight years in office.

There are 265 lawmakers in parliament from parties that said they would vote to topple Lecornu. While some politicians from other groups indicated they would back the no-confidence motions, they were not enough to sway the first vote.

If Lecornu were defeated in either vote, he and his ministers would have to immediately resign, and Macron would come under huge pressure to call a snap parliamentary election, plunging France back into crisis.

But even if, as expected, he also survives the second vote on Thursday, Lecornu still faces weeks of arduous negotiations in parliament over passing a slimmed-down 2026 budget during which he could be toppled at any point.

After winning the pensions concession, the Socialists on Wednesday set their sights on including a tax on billionaires in the 2026 budget, underlining just how weak Lecornu's hand is in the negotiations.

POLITICAL KRYPTONITE

France is in the midst of its worst political crisis in decades as a succession of minority governments seek to push deficit-reducing budgets through a truculent legislature split into three distinct ideological blocs.

Reforming France's generous pension system has been political kryptonite ever since Socialist President Francois Mitterrand cut the retirement age to 60 from 65 in 1982.

In France, the average effective retirement age is just 60.7, compared to the OECD average of 64.4.

Macron's reform raised the statutory retirement age by two years to 64 by 2030. Although that only brings French policy into line with other European Union member states, it chips away at a cherished social benefit beloved by the left.

VOTE ON PENSION REFORM SUSPENSION IN NOVEMBER

Lecornu told lawmakers on Wednesday he would propose in November an amendment to the social security financing law in order to suspend the reform.

Some leftist lawmakers told the Socialists that Lecornu was setting up an ambush. By placing a clause to suspend the pension reform there, the Socialists could be forced to swallow other measures that they disapprove of, they said.

"They've been duped!" senior hard-left lawmaker Manuel Bompard told TF1 television.