France’s prime minister Élisabeth Borne has resigned after days of increasingly feverish speculation about an imminent government reshuffle.
Emmanuel Macron, who is seeking to give a new impetus to his second mandate before European parliament elections and the Paris Olympics this summer, said on Monday he thanked Borne “with all his heart” for her “exemplary work in the service of the nation”.
“You have put our project into effect with the courage, engagement and the determination of a stateswoman,” Macron tweeted.
In her resignation letter, Borne said it was “more necessary than ever to continue the reforms” being pursued by the government.
“I wanted to tell you how passionate I have been about this mission,” she wrote, adding that she was “guided by the constant concern, which we share, to achieve rapid and tangible results for our fellow citizens”.
However, she made it clear the decision to go had not been not hers and that she had taken note of the president’s wish to appoint a new prime minister.
The reshuffle comes five months before the European parliament elections, with Eurosceptics expected to make record gains at a time of widespread public discontent over surging living costs and the failure of European governments to curb immigration.
Opinion polls show Macron’s party trailing that of the far-right leader Marine Le Pen byeight to 10 points before the June vote.
Borne, 62, was appointed PM in May 2022, shortly after Macron was re-elected to the Elysée. She was only the second female prime minister in France since the start of the Fifth Republic. Weeks later the government lost its absolute majority in the Assemblée Nationale in a general election.
It meant Borne, as head of a minority government, was forced to push contested legislation promised in Macron’s presidential campaign, including an overhaul of the pension system and an immigration bill, through parliament often with recourse to a controversial constitutional clause, the 49:3, that avoided a vote on the issues. Borne’s government used the clause a total of 23 times.
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Borne, a graduate of the now closed École Nationale d’Administration (ENA), the former elite hothouse for French politicians and business leaders, had served as transport minister, ecological transition minister and employment minister before being named as PM.
At the time of her resignation, no successor had been named. Three names were being put forward in the French media as likely candidates, Gabriel Attal, the education minister, Sébastien Lecornu, the armed forces minister, and Julien Denormandie, the former agriculture minister who announced he was leaving politics after failing to be appointed PM after the 2022 presidential election.
