Politics
Back to the future as France’s Macron reappoints Lecornu as PM
- Macron reappoints last PM to resolve political crisis
- Hard left and far right angered by Macron’s choice.
- Crisis denting economic growth, central bank chief warns.
French President Emmanuel Macron reappointed Sebastien Lecornu as prime minister on Friday just days after he quit the job, a move that enraged some of the president’s fiercest political opponents who pledged to vote out the new government.
Macron, 47, will hope loyalist Lecornu can draw enough support from a deeply divided parliament to pass a 2026 budget. Faced with France’s worst political crisis in decades, many of Macron’s rivals have demanded he either call fresh parliamentary elections or resign.
The immediate reaction to Lecornu’s appointment from the far right and hard left was scathing, suggesting his second stint as prime minister will be no easier than his first, which ended on Monday when he resigned after just 27 days in office.
“The Lecornu II government, appointed by Emmanuel Macron who is more isolated and out of touch than ever at the Elysee Palace, is a bad joke, a democratic disgrace and a humiliation for the French people,” National Rally party president Jordan Bardella posted on X.
Lecornu’s priority is to pass a budget for 2026
There was no immediate reaction from the leadership of the Socialists and the conservative Republicans, both of whom will be crucial to Lecornu’s survival.
Lecornu’s most pressing task will be to deliver a budget to parliament by the end of Monday.
“I accept – out of duty – the mission entrusted to me by the President of the Republic to do everything possible to provide France with a budget by the end of the year and to address the daily life issues of our fellow citizens,” he wrote on X.
“We must put an end to this political crisis that exasperates the French people and to this instability that is harmful to France’s image and its interests.”
Lecornu added that whoever joined his government would have to renounce their personal ambitions to succeed Macron in 2027, a contest that has injected instability into France’s weak minority governments and fractious legislature. He pledged his cabinet would “embody renewal and diversity.”
Macron’s entourage said Lecornu had “carte blanche”, in a sign the president was leaving his prime minister plenty of wiggle room to negotiate a cabinet and budget.
Leftist parties upset with Macron
Macron earlier convened a meeting of mainstream party leaders to rally support around his choice, but angered leftist parties when they found out one of their own would not be named as prime minister.
Another collapsed government would raise the likelihood of Macron calling a snap election, a scenario seen benefiting the far right the most.
France’s political turmoil, which has dented growth and spooked financial markets, was in large part triggered by Macron’s decision last year to hold a legislative election, a gamble that delivered a hung parliament split between three ideologically opposed blocs.
The country’s push to get its finances in order, requiring budget cuts or tax hikes that no party can agree on, has only deepened the malaise.
If the National Assembly cannot find common ground on a budget in the time given, emergency legislation may be needed to keep the country running next year on a roll-over budget.
Fate of pension reforms is key issue
The country’s central bank chief, Francois Villeroy de Galhau, forecast on Friday that the current political uncertainty would cost the economy 0.2 percentage points of gross domestic product. Business sentiment was suffering but the economy was broadly fine, he said.
“Uncertainty is … the number one enemy of growth,” Villeroy told RTL radio.
Fraught budget negotiations have cost Macron three prime ministers in less than 12 months.
Central to the most recent budget negotiations have been the left’s desire to repeal Macron’s 2023 pension reforms that lifted the retirement age, and tax the wealthy more heavily. Those demands have been hard to square with the conservatives, whose support Macron also needs to pass a budget.
In Friday’s meeting, Macron offered to delay raising the retirement age as far as 64 by one year to 2028. Green leader Marine Tondelier described the concession as insufficient.
The deficit is forecast to hit 5.4% this year, nearly double the European Union’s cap. Lecornu recently said he envisaged a 2026 deficit between 4.7% – 5%.
- Air force facility in Idaho to house F-15 fighter jets and pilots.
- Signing just another example of US-Qatar partnership: Hegseth.
- Hegseth thanks Qatar for its “substantial role” in Hamas-Israel deal
WASHINGTON: US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth announced Friday that Qatar will be allowed to build an air force facility at Mountain Home Air Base in Idaho that will house F-15 fighter jets and pilots.
The announcement comes soon after President Donald Trump signed an executive order vowing to defend the Gulf Arab state against attacks, following Israeli air strikes targeting Hamas leaders in the Qatari capital Doha.
“We’re signing a letter of acceptance to build a Qatari Emiri Air Force facility at the Mountain Home Air Base in Idaho,” Hegseth said at the Pentagon, with Qatari Defence Minister Sheikh Saoud bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani at his side.
“The location will host a contingent of Qatari F-15s and pilots to enhance our combined training” as well as “increase lethality, interoperability,” he said.
“It’s just another example of our partnership. And I hope you know, your excellency, that you can count on us.”
The Idaho base currently also hosts a fighter jet squadron from Singapore, according to its website.
Hegseth also thanked Qatar for its “substantial role” as a mediator in the talks that led to a truce and hostage-prisoner swap deal between Israel and Hamas, and its assistance in securing the release of a US citizen from Afghanistan.
The Qatari minister hailed the “strong, enduring partnership” and “deep defence relationship” shared by the two countries.
The Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar is Washington´s largest military facility in the Middle East.
Trump’s close relationship with the leaders of Qatar has raised eyebrows, especially over its gift to the US president of a Boeing 747 to be used as Air Force One.
Though the Idaho facility for Qatar had apparently been in the works since the last administration of Democrat Joe Biden, the deal prompted some hand-wringing on social media, including from far-right activist Laura Loomer, usually a Trump ally.
“Never thought I’d see Republicans give terror financing Muslims from Qatar a MILITARY BASE on US soil so they can murder Americans,” Loomer wrote on X.
Hegseth, who never said it was a base, later wrote on the platform: “Qatar will not have their own base in the United States — nor anything like a base. We control the existing base, like we do with all partners.”
OSLO: Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado won the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for fighting dictatorship in the country and dedicated the award in part to US President Donald Trump, who has repeatedly insisted he deserved it.
Machado, a 58-year-old industrial engineer who lives in hiding, was blocked in 2024 by Venezuela’s courts from running for president and thus challenging President Nicolas Maduro, who has been in power since 2013.
“Oh my God … I have no words,” Machado told the secretary of the award body, Kristian Berg Harpviken, in a phone call which the Nobel Committee posted on social media.
“I thank you so much, but I hope you understand this is a movement, this is an achievement of a whole society. I am just one person. I certainly do not deserve it,” she added.
Laureate praises Trump’s ‘decisive support for our cause’
She later said, in an X post in English: “I dedicate the prize to the suffering people of Venezuela and to President Trump for his decisive support of our cause!”
Trump is a fierce critic of Maduro and the US is one of a number of countries that does not recognise his government’s legitimacy.
The White House had earlier criticised the Norwegian Nobel Committee’s decision to focus on Venezuela just days after Trump announced a breakthrough in talks to halt the fighting in Gaza between Israel and Hamas.
“President Trump will continue making peace deals, ending wars, and saving lives… The Nobel Committee proved they place politics over peace,” White House spokesperson Steven Cheung said in a post on X.
Maduro, whose 12 years in office have been marked by deep economic and social crisis, was sworn in for a third term in January this year, despite a six-month-long election dispute, international calls for him to stand aside and an increase in the US reward offered for his capture.
“When authoritarians seize power, it is crucial to recognise courageous defenders of freedom who rise and resist,” the Nobel Committee said in its citation.
Marco Rubio, now Trump’s secretary of state, nominated Machado for the Peace Prize together with a group of US members of Congress in August 2024, when he was still a senator.
Will she be able to attend ceremony?
It was not immediately clear whether she would be able to attend the award ceremony in Oslo on December 10, the anniversary of the death of Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel, who founded the awards in his 1895 will.
Should she not attend, she would join the list of Peace Prize laureates prevented from doing so in the award’s 124-year history, including Soviet dissident Andrei Sakharov in 1975, Poland’s Lech Walesa in 1983 and Myanmar’s Aung San Suu Kyi in 1991.
Machado is the first Venezuelan to win the Nobel Peace Prize and the sixth from Latin America. Her three adult children are living abroad for safety reasons.
The United Nations human rights office welcomed the award to Machado as a recognition of “the clear aspirations of the people of Venezuela for free and fair elections”.
The head of the award committee, Joergen Watne Frydnes, said he hoped it would spur the Venezuelan opposition’s work.
“We hope that the entire opposition will have renewed energy to continue the work for a peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy,” Frydnes told Reuters after the announcement.
US has been strong supporter of Venezuelan opposition
The lead-up to this year’s prize announcement was dominated by Trump’s repeated public statements that he deserved to win the award.
“The democratic opposition of Venezuela is something that the US has been eager to support. So, in that sense, it would be hard for anyone to constitute this as an insult to Trump,” said Halvard Leira, research director at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs.
The United States has struck several vessels allegedly carrying drugs off the coast of Venezuela in recent weeks.
Trump has determined that the US is engaged in “a non-international armed conflict” with drug cartels, according to a document notifying Congress of its legal justification for deadly US strikes on boats off Venezuela.
Machado has publicly supported the US military operation, telling Fox Noticias last month the operation was “aimed at saving lives” in both nations.
Gaza deal too late for Trump, this year
Frydnes, the Nobel committee leader, declined to say what it would take for Trump or others to win the prize in the future, or if efforts to end the fighting in Gaza could lead to an award in 2026.
“It’s not our task to tell other people or other countries what to do, our task is to give out the peace prize…. So we’ll have to see next year,” Frydnes said.
The United States on Friday warned it would impose sanctions and other punitive measures against any nation supporting a proposed carbon tax on maritime transport being considered by a UN agency.
In a joint statement, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, along with the secretaries of energy and transportation, said Washington would “vigorously defend its economic interests by imposing costs on countries that back” the Net Zero Framework (NZF) a plan designed to curb global carbon emissions in the shipping industry.
The London-based International Maritime Organization (IMO) is scheduled to vote next week on adopting the NZF, which would introduce a global carbon pricing mechanism for the shipping sector.
The US government, however, slammed the proposal, calling it “a global carbon tax that would harm economic growth and penalize developing nations.”
Since retaking office in January, President Donald Trump has rolled back several climate initiatives, dismissing climate change as a “hoax” and promoting fossil fuel expansion through deregulation.
Rubio, Energy Secretary Chris Wright, and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy reiterated that the Trump administration “categorically rejects” the NZF proposal and will resist any attempt to impose what it considers “globalist economic controls” through the UN framework.
They threatened a range of punishing actions against countries that vote in favor of the framework, including: visa restrictions; blocking vessels registered in those countries from US ports; imposing commercial penalties; and considering sanctions on officials.
“The United States will be moving to levy these remedies against nations that sponsor this European-led neocolonial export of global climate regulations,” the statement said.
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