The crisis that shakes France

Zečević Slobodan (Institut za evropske studije, Beograd), szecevic5@gmail.com

Is France the “economic sick man” of the European Union? Public debt has accumulated over the years, most notably during Emmanuel Macron’s term, and, especially in the context of the coronavirus epidemic, has reached €3,305 billion, or 113% of GDP. The political crisis in France has reached a critical point. The president has one of the lowest levels of voter confidence in the history of the Fifth Republic (only 17% of citizens expressing satisfaction). Prime ministers are changing with remarkable frequency. Sébastien Lecornu will become the fourth prime minister in the past 20 months and the seventh since Emmanuel Macron was elected president of France in 2017. The current situation increasingly resembles the formerly unstable parliamentary Fourth Republic, rather than De Gaulle’s stable and strong presidential Fifth Republic. Is the current situation a regime crisis? Is De Gaulle’s constitutional concept now outdated? Should Emmanuel Macron consider resigning? The author provides appropriate rational explanations for all of the above questions in this paper.

Keywords: Fifth Republic, presidential system, parliamentary regime, public debt, political instability