The protests that rocked France this week did not come out of the blue. For more than a year now, our country has been in a state of unprecedented political turmoil. You can date this crisis to June 2024, when Emmanuel Macron unexpectedly called a snap election that produced gridlock in the national assembly, rendering all subsequent governments unable to govern. This week’s events have added another historic chapter to the tumult.
For the first time in the history of the Fifth Republic, a government collapsed after a vote of confidence initiated by a prime minister. François Bayrou, in office for just nine months, chose to place his ministerial fate in the hands of an openly hostile hung parliament. The outcome was a foregone conclusion: even the right, though partly represented within his government, broke ranks – a third of the conservative (Les Républicains) deputies refused to back Bayrou. Now, with Sébastien Lecornu – a close ally of Emmanuel Macron – becoming France’s fifth prime minister to be sworn in since May 2022, the question looms large: how did France, whose institutions once seemed so unshakable, arrive at such a state of fragility?
