STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
France's prime minister resigned today, less than a month after he was appointed in response to the last French political crisis. Now, France is one of those countries that has a prime minister and a president. President Emmanuel Macron is still on the job and has accepted the prime minister's resignation, all of which Eleanor Beardsley is covering from Paris. Hi, Eleanor.
ELEANOR BEARDSLEY, BYLINE: Hi, Steve.
INSKEEP: Who is the person who just resigned and why so suddenly?
BEARDSLEY: Well, his name was Sebastien Lecornu - it still is. He was defense minister before. He's a Macron loyalist from the center right. Macron appointed him last month to replace the prime minister who was brought down right before him in a no-confidence vote. Actually, the last two prime ministers were brought down that way because the far right and far left, who control the biggest blocs in Parliament, weren't happy. They both want someone from their camp. And last night, when this new prime minister finally named his government, they were already saying, the two extremes, we're going to bring him down because this is the same old people, the same faces, a reshuffling of Macron's previous governments that they call Macronie. And so, this morning, he resigned on his own to everyone's shock.
INSKEEP: Wow. So his government lasted less than a day.
BEARDSLEY: Yeah.
INSKEEP: What's the fundamental issue he's facing here?
BEARDSLEY: Well, this all started about a year ago when Macron made a very risky move of dissolving Parliament thinking he could increase his small majority. Instead, he lost it. Today, no party has an outright majority, but as I said, the extremes on the right and left have the biggest voting blocs. So the governments have been hobbling along with an ever-shrinking center. The country is divided, France has massive debt and there's disagreement over how it should be addressed. And the far left and right, they don't want budget cuts that Macron's proposing. They want to tax the rich or end immigration and pay less to the EU. I went to some demonstrations a couple of days ago from the left, who are protesting Macron and all of his prime ministers. They're chanting here tax the rich. They say Macron's not listening to the people. Here's 25-year-old student Pierre Rapee (ph).
PIERRE RAPEE: For our generation, we are very engaged ecologically, socially. And we face strong inequalities in the sense that multibillionaire people in France control a huge percentage of the patrimony and have huge power. And we are here to fight this.
INSKEEP: OK, lots of passionate people. But what happens to the government now?
BEARDSLEY: Well, that's what everyone is debating this morning. Macron, he's kind of running out of options. He can't keep repeating the same move. People are saying, some analysts, that he needs to, you know, name somebody from the left or dissolve the National Assembly again. But there's a lot of pressure, Steve, because we have a presidential election coming up in a year and a half. Macron cannot run again. There's a lot of politicians jockeying. Here is the outgoing prime minister speaking this morning to the nation.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
SEBASTIEN LECORNU: (Speaking French).
BEARDSLEY: Yeah, he said it's very hard to be prime minister. He had met with social partners, and they were coming to agreement on things over the last month before he named this government. He said, but the lines have hardened. It's impossible for him to do his job. He said France could make it, but to succeed, there has to be humility, a tamping down of egos. And he said you've got to prefer your country to your party.
INSKEEP: Sounds familiar. Eleanor, thanks so much.
BEARDSLEY: You're welcome.
INSKEEP: NPR's Eleanor Beardsley. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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