Sébastien Lecornu appointed as France’s new prime minister

French President Emmanuel Macron appointed the country’s Armed Forces Minister, Sébastien Lecornu, as the new prime minister on Tuesday evening, following the ousting of François Bayrou in a no-confidence vote on Monday.

The 39-year-old politician is the only minister to have remained in government since Macron was first elected in 2017, surviving numerous cabinet reshuffles and snap elections.

A parliamentary official told POLITICO, “He has been quite successful in Macron’s world. He has some staying power.”

Over the past seven years, Lecornu has emerged as a loyal ally to Macron, developing a political style very similar to the president’s.

In addition to his role in the government, Lecornu also serves as a council member in his native Normandy, where he spends most weekends.

The minister maintains a low public profile, revealing little about his personal life and outwardly preserving a “serious” image.

Other potential prime minister candidates included his longtime friend and ally, Justice Minister Gérald Darmanin, Labor and Health Minister Catherine Vautrin, and Economy Minister Éric Lombard.

According to his profile in POLITICO, however, Lecornu is much more “lively” behind closed doors, and France’s ruling circles generally view him as a skilled politician. A senator from an opposition party described him as “incredibly talented,” adding, “You can ask him the same question three times in a debate, he knows how to not answer [when he doesn’t want to], and still give the impression that he is a good listener.”

Lecornu began his political career at 19 as France’s youngest parliamentary assistant. Originally a member of the conservative Les Républicains party, Lecornu has worked to earn respect from the political center and right, from gaining the trust of Emmanuel and Brigitte Macron to holding somewhat controversial dinners with far-right leader Marine Le Pen.

Since the start of the war in Ukraine, Lecornu, a reserve officer in the National Gendarmerie, has also become the face of France’s military expansion.

In 2023, Lecornu managed the parliamentary vote for a new military planning law that provides for €413 billion in defense spending from 2024 to 2030. His dog, Tiga, “roams freely” in the corridors of the armed forces ministry.

Lecornu has a close relationship with his German counterpart, Boris Pistorius, another defense minister who successfully emerged from snap elections.

While successful at building bilateral and personal relationships, the French minister is less comfortable in multilateral settings, such as EU foreign affairs and defense meetings in Brussels. Last year, former Prime Minister Michel Barnier reportedly told him to come to the de facto EU capital more often. “His way of thinking is not very European,” an official said.

A fervent supporter of “French sovereignty,” Lecornu has sometimes expressed his wariness of EU institutions, particularly the European Commission.

In his speeches, he often invokes the names of Charles de Gaulle, the architect of the Fifth Republic, and Pierre Messmer, de Gaulle’s armed forces minister.

The aforementioned parliamentary official said that part of the minister’s legacy is already being written, adding, “The image he wants to leave behind, and will leave behind, is that of being the face of France’s rearmament.”