Image Credit: CHRISTOPHE PETIT TESSON / Contributor / Getty 
French President Emmanuel Macron named 18 ministers in a new government on Sunday, putting together a team of largely familiar faces under Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu as he struggles to pull the country out of a political crisis.
The new cabinet lineup was unveiled nearly a month after the appointment of Lecornu, Macron’s seventh prime minister.
Bruno Le Maire—economy minister from 2017–2024—was named defence minister while Macron loyalist Roland Lescure will take over the economy portfolio, with the task of delivering a budget plan for next year, an undertaking that felled the last two governments.
Despite meetings and negotiations with the different political groupings, Lecornu seems to have missed the mark on putting together a government acceptable to a majority of the National Assembly. The list of largely familiar names, holdovers from the latest iteration of a French government, pleased neither the Right or the Left.
Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot, Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau, and Justice Minister Gerald Darmanin are all returning, as is scandal-ridden culture minister Rachida Dati, who is set to stand trial for corruption next year.
Rassemblement National’s Marine Le Pen called the cabinet lineup “pathetic” while her party chair Jordan Bardella reiterated the threat of a no-confidence vote, saying the government “is clearly all about continuity, with absolutely none of the break [with the past] that the French are expecting.”
Boris Vallaud, head of the Socialist MPs, accused Macron’s supporters of seeking to plunge France “further into chaos”.
“They lose elections but they govern. They don’t have a majority but refuse to compromise. They get overthrown but stay in office,” he said on X.
Jean-Luc Mélenchon of far-left La France Insoumise slammed the lineup as a “procession of revenants” that he said “will not last.”
“”Elections for nothing, two votes of no confidence for nothing? This won’t hold. And all this for what? Just to fatten up a parasitic oligarchy living off the country. The countdown to get rid of them has begun,” he said on X. According to Mélenchon, Bruno Retailleau was already threatening to leave the government on Sunday evening. “There you have the preachers of stability and responsibility,” he said.
Macron has just 18 months left in power and is enduring his worst-ever popularity levels. He has insisted he will serve out his term.
