For more than a year now, French politicians have been struggling with the lack of an absolute majority (or even a comfortable relative majority) in the National Assembly. In December 2024, for the first time since the founding years of the Fifth Republic, a government fell after a vote of no confidence by MPs, triggering the resignation of Michel Barnier as prime minister.

Barnier’s successor, François Bayrou, suffered the same fate in September 2025, and a third prime minister, Sébastien Lecornu, resigned from his post after less than a month earlier this week, giving the political crisis a farcical appearance. At the time of writing, Lecornu is still trying to piece together an agenda for government in a caretaker role. Uncertainty looms over the possibility of fresh elections over the next few months.

What is at stake here is a crisis of the entire political regime known as the Fifth Republic and its entry into a new phase in its history. This third phase comes after the first, dominated by the Gaullist right and its allies, and the second, where alternation between governments of left and right became the norm.