France's 'perpetual political crisis' renews calls for a Sixth Republic

As the president names his eighth prime minister since 2017, the case is being made for a new constitution

- Megan Clement

The country is divided, the parliament cannot agree, the prime minister has resigned and former president Nicolas Sarkozy is on trial. This is Groundhog Day à la française — plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

The past week has been particularly chaotic. On Monday, the prime minister Sébastien Lecornu was forced to resign over disagreements about his proposed cabinet, barely a month after he'd been appointed. Over the course of a frantic five days of negotiations over Lecornu's replacement, Macron ended up back where he began, reappointing the man whose resignation he'd just accepted. The left and the far right immediately promised to censure the new government.

When did this sense of perpetual crisis take hold of French politics? Was it in summer 2024, when Macron lost his grip on the national assembly in snap parliamentary elections called after being humbled by the far right in European polls? Was it 2018, when the mass movement of gilets jaunes - the yellow vests - swept the nation? Or does the crisis date back to 1958, when Charles de Gaulle ushered in the current French constitution and with it, the Fifth Republic? And is it time for a Sixth?