Macon faces pressure to call second snap election as Bayrou government falters

Exactly one year after Emmanuel Macron dissolved the National Assembly and triggered a legislative election that nearly brought the far right to power, the French president once again holds the constitutional authority to do it all over again. The window reopened in June 2025, and the question consuming Paris is whether he will use it.

His centrist government, led by Prime Minister François Bayrou, is surviving on borrowed time. The National Rally, which won a record number of seats in the 2024 election, has made clear it can topple Bayrou whenever it chooses. In April, Macron publicly ruled out another dissolution. Privately, according to multiple current and former officials, as well as friends of the presidential couple, he is weighing the option.

The constitutional clock and the Bayrou problem

Article 12 of the French Constitution prevents a president from dissolving parliament twice within a year. That prohibition expired in June 2025. The timing is not incidental. Bayrou's government has no majority of its own. It exists only because the National Rally, led by Marine Le Pen and her party president Jordan Bardella, has so far declined to vote for a censure motion. That restraint is tactical, not generous. Le Pen's party is waiting for the moment that maximises its own advantage, whether that is the autumn budget debate or a scandal dating back to Bayrou's tenure as education minister in the 1990s.

Macron's frustration with his prime minister is, by several accounts, boiling over. The two men are political opposites. Macron, a former investment banker who shattered the traditional party system in 2017, prizes speed and disruption. Bayrou, a veteran of the centre-right who has navigated French politics for decades, is known for equivocation and caution. A close friend of the president described him as 'irritated' and 'annoyed about everything', with the frustration spilling into daily life.

A gamble that backfired

The 2024 dissolution was Macron's decision alone. On the night of the European elections on 9 June 2024, with the National Rally surging across the continent, he announced a snap vote for 30 June and 7 July. His calculation was twofold: that the left would fail to unite in three weeks, and that a legislative defeat for the far right at home would block Marine Le Pen's path to the Élysée in 2027. 'Good luck to the left in uniting in three weeks,' he told ministers that evening. Then he added: 'It's better to have Bardella at Matignon than Le Pen at the Élysée in 2027.'

Both bets failed. The left formed the New Popular Front alliance within days. The National Rally won the popular vote in both rounds, 37 percent in the first, 32 percent in the second, and secured 142 seats, its highest ever. Macron's Ensemble alliance fell to 166 seats, well short of the 289 needed for a majority. The left alliance took 182. The result was a hung parliament in which no bloc could govern alone.

Turnout was high, 66 percent in the first round, 67 percent in the second, and Macron's allies still cite it as proof that voters wanted clarity. But the popular vote told a different story. The far right's share increased from the European election a few weeks earlier, a signal that matters more for the 2027 presidential race than the seat count in the National Assembly.

The prime ministerial carousel

The aftermath has been a procession of short-lived governments. Michel Barnier, appointed in September 2024, lasted fewer than 100 days before a censure motion backed by the National Rally and the left ousted him in December. France entered 2025 without a proper budget for the first time in its modern history. Bayrou, appointed in December, has survived longer but only because the National Rally has held its fire.

In his New Year address, Macron offered what sounded like a mea culpa. 'I decided on the dissolution to give you back your voice,' he read from a teleprompter. 'This decision has brought more instability than serenity, and I take full responsibility for that.' Advisers had pushed for a clearer apology. The phrase 'full responsibility' satisfied few. To loyalists listening closely, it was not an admission of error but a restatement of presidential authority.

The gambler's mindset

Alexis Kohler, Macron's longtime chief of staff often called his 'second brain', and Philippe Grangeon, a former special adviser who remains in regular contact, have both described the president to colleagues as a gambler who leaves the casino with empty pockets but convinced the next hand will be different. A former colleague of the aides recounted the analogy to explain how Macron processes political risk. The president, in this view, does not learn from losses; he doubles down.

That instinct drove the 2024 decision. Several people close to Macron said he believed the government would have collapsed that autumn over the budget vote anyway, forcing an election on unfavourable terms. Better to 'provoke his fate rather than suffer it,' as a former minister who opposed the dissolution put it. The irony is that the election produced a prime minister allergic to the very risk-taking Macron favours.

Hollande's verdict and the April denial

François Hollande, who brought Macron into government as economy minister in 2014 before their relationship soured, has been blunt in private conversations. He is 'unconvinced' by Macron's public denials and says the president is 'of course' still considering another election. He calls it Macron's 'last power', the one constitutional lever he retains while his parliamentary authority evaporates.

During a trip to Madagascar in April 2025, Macron appeared to kill the speculation. 'There will be no dissolution,' he told journalists. But allies were simultaneously advising him not to rule it out entirely, if only to keep the threat alive as leverage over the National Assembly. Members of parliament from multiple parties took the Madagascar statement as tactical, not final.

The autumn trap

The next danger point is the 2026 budget debate in the autumn. Bayrou's government must pass a finance bill in a parliament where the National Rally holds the balance. If Le Pen's party decides the budget is unacceptable, or if the child abuse allegations from Bayrou's time as education minister resurface with force, a censure motion could follow. Macron would then face a choice: appoint a third prime minister in a year, or dissolve.

Sébastien Lecornu, the armed forces minister and a Macron loyalist, has been mentioned as a possible replacement. But naming a new premier without an election would deepen the sense of democratic drift. Some in the president's circle believe he is secretly counting on parliament to remove Bayrou, giving him a pretext for a fresh vote. 'Possible snap elections in the fall are no longer a whispered rumour but a genuine possibility some are starting to prepare for,' one source said.

The 2027 horizon

Everything is refracted through the 2027 presidential election. Macron cannot run again. His obsession, allies say, is preventing Le Pen from winning. The 2024 dissolution was meant to break her momentum. Instead, it entrenched her party as the kingmaker in the National Assembly and demonstrated its popular vote strength. A second dissolution would be an admission that the first failed, but also a bet that the political landscape can still be reshaped before the presidential campaign begins in earnest.

The risk is enormous. A second snap election could produce an even more fragmented parliament, or a National Rally majority that installs Bardella as prime minister, the very outcome Macron sought to avoid. It could also trigger a constitutional crisis if the president is seen as abusing his dissolution power. Yet the alternative, a paralysed government limping towards 2027 with Macron a lame duck, carries its own dangers.