Who Is France’s New Prime Minister, Sébastien Lecornu?

Caught in a maelstrom of political paralysis, financial woes and social unrest, President Emmanuel Macron of France has turned to one of his most trusted allies to be his new prime minister: Sébastien Lecornu.

Mr. Lecornu, who was appointed by Mr. Macron on Tuesday a little more than 24 hours after the previous government collapsed, has been at the French leader’s side for the entirety of his presidency. He is the only minister to have been in every cabinet since Mr. Macron was first elected in 2017.

Now, though, Mr. Lecornu, 39, must prove that his proximity to Mr. Macron — whose already-low popularity has reached new depths — will not become a liability in a role that exposes him to France’s weary electorate far more than previously.

“He was a good minister because he had the president’s ear,” said Cédric Perrin, a senator from eastern France who presides over the Senate’s foreign affairs and armed forces committee.

“You don’t want that advantage to turn into a drawback,” he added. Though to the president’s critics, it is already. They credited the choice of Mr. Lecornu with helping to fuel angry protests across the country on Wednesday.

In a short speech before he took office, Mr. Lecornu acknowledged the challenges ahead. He must get a budget passed through the lower house of Parliament by the end of the year, even though it remains bitterly divided on how to address the country’s financial troubles.

“There is no impossible path,” he assured.

Cautious and discrete

Mr. Lecornu, the son of an aeronautics factory worker and a medical secretary, is a reserve colonel in the French gendarmerie, a military aficionado and a history buff. As defense minister since 2022, he fully subscribed to Mr. Macron’s view that France and Europe had to chart a more independent course outside of American or Chinese dominance — partly by muscling up.

“Defense must play a much more important role in our national debate,” Mr. Lecornu wrote last year in a book entitled “Toward War?” that aimed to explain the place of France and of its military in a changing world order. It was dedicated to his grandfather, a member of the French Resistance during World War II.

Mr. Perrin noted that Mr. Lecornu, unlike others in Mr. Macron’s camp, had never publicly criticized the president’s unexpected decision last year to call snap elections.

“Caution and discretion are the two keys to his exceptional longevity in government,” the newspaper Le Monde wrote in a lengthy profile last year.

A precocious politician

Mr. Macron had never held elected office before the presidency and is often accused by his detractors as being out of step and aloof as a result. But Mr. Lecornu, who briefly studied public law in Paris, entered politics at a young age

He was a parliamentary attaché at 19; an adviser to Bruno Le Maire, a former conservative French minister, at 22; and he was elected mayor of Vernon, a town in Normandy, when he was 28. He was elected senator for the Eure area of Normandy in 2020.

Mr. Lecornu is one of several mainstream conservatives who defected to Mr. Macron’s government at the start of his first term in 2017. He joined Édouard Philippe, who was Mr. Macron’s prime minister from 2017 to 2020, and Gérald Darmanin, who served as interior minister and justice minister and is one of Mr. Lecornu’s closest friends.

“He has a great capacity for dialogue,” Mr. Darmanin, referring to Mr. Lecornu, told RTL radio on Wednesday.

Stiff opposition

Mr. Macron’s opponents were less impressed.

Media reports last year of a secret dinner between Mr. Lecornu and Marine Le Pen, the longtime leader of the nationalist, anti-immigrant National Rally party, gave him the reputation of someone who can work with the far right.

But Ms. Le Pen, who is pushing Mr. Macron to call new parliamentary elections, said that Mr. Lecornu’s appointment was “Macronism’s last shot,” although her party has said it would not move to oust him immediately.

Olivier Faure, the head of the Socialist Party, said on Franceinfo radio that Mr. Lecornu’s predecessors had also been presented as expert mediators. Michel Barnier, appointed a year ago, was the European Union’s former top negotiator on Brexit, and François Bayrou, who came next, was a veteran centrist with decades of political experience.

“We saw what the result was,” Mr. Faure said — Mr. Bayrou lasted only nine months, and Mr. Barnier barely three.

“So I hear the talking points,” Mr. Faure said of Mr. Lecornu. But, he added, “we will judge based on the actual evidence.”

Catherine Porter contributed reporting.