PARIS — French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu announced his government at 7.40 p.m. on Sunday. By 9.45 a.m. the next morning, it was all over.

Lecornu submitted his government’s resignation to President Emmanuel Macron on Monday morning, just 14 hours after key members of his cabinet were announced. He had served less than 27 days on the job — becoming France’s shortest-serving prime minister in modern history.

His downfall is a seismic shock that has pushed the country even further into a political catastrophe with little recent precedent. After having cycled through three governments in less than a year, Macron looks increasingly isolated and under intense pressure to call new legislative elections or resign.

Here’s how we got here.

The break that never came

The original sin that sparked the crisis was Macron’s decision to call a snap election after his party’s humiliating defeat in last year’s European election.

The surprise vote yielded a hung parliament with no bloc able to govern effectively. Opposition lawmakers torpedoed Lecornu’s two immediate predecessors, Michel Barnier and François Bayrou, over their attempts to slash public spending to rein in France’s ballooning debt and budget deficit.

Lecornu was trying to thread the same needle and prioritized budget talks over ministerial nominations. He had gone 26 days without naming a government, the longest transition period in the history of France’s Fifth Republic, which was founded in 1958.

Macron’s opponents said they wanted signals of a clear break from the president’s past policies before agreeing to work with the new PM. Lecornu had pledged on Friday to refrain from using a controversial constitutional mechanism that allows the government to push through legislation without a vote, but that promise satisfied few.

The center-left Socialist Party, which Lecornu had been courting, wanted assurances that lawmakers would be able to revisit the unpopular law to raise the retirement age for most workers.

The conservative Les Républicains, led by the hardline outgoing Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau, wanted guarantees that Retailleau would retain his post and would be granted full control over issuing visas and limiting access to medical care for undocumented people. The party, which had supported the previous two minority governments, also wanted assurances that Lecornu would rule out implementing a new wealth tax inspired by the economist Gabriel Zucman or backtrack on the 2023 pensions reform.

Lecornu responded with a short letter of intent outlining his future plans, stopping short of specific proposals but mentioning the need to address “irregular immigration.”

At the time, that answer had appeared to be enough to assuage Retailleau, though Les Républicains had been split on whether to join the new government in the hours before its announcement.

But when Macron’s chief of staff appeared on the Elysée steps to announce a first round of appointments on Sunday evening, it was far from a “break.”

Most ministers were holdovers from Bayrou’s team, and the two most prominent new additions — Bruno Le Maire at the armed forces ministry and Roland Lescure at the economy and finance ministry — were centrists who had held top jobs in previous governments under Macron.

Later that evening, Retailleau took to X to declare that the “composition of the government did not reflect” the “break” with previous administrations that Lecornu had promised upon taking office — and announced he would convene an emergency meeting of his party’s strategic board the next day.

Retailleau said in an interview Monday that the prime minister had broken his trust by failing to mention his plan to appoint Le Maire, Macron’s economy minister from 2017 to 2024 who, like Lecornu, had left Les Républicains to join the president’s centrist party.

What’s happening now

Furor over the political chaos is now spilling over into Macron’s own ranks.

A centrist politician close to the decision-making told POLITICO that Macron’s camp appears exasperated with its leader.

That individual, granted anonymity to speak candidly, said many lawmakers close to Macron believe the president is deliberately sowing chaos to pave the way for the far-right National Rally to take power — giving him a chance to stage a comeback in 2032.

Macron, barred from running again after two consecutive terms, could theoretically stand in the following presidential election.

Meanwhile, the political instability is fueling market jitters.

France’s blue-chip index, the CAC40, dropped close to two percent after Lecornu’s announcement before clawing back some of the losses closer to the trading session’s close.

The yield on France’s 10-year government bond — the benchmark for borrowing costs — also rose in the morning near its highest level this year and temporarily surpassed its Italian counterpart.

What comes next

Lecornu’s resignation has once again thrown French politics into disarray, and Macron has few options left on the table.

Macron could appoint another head of government from his ranks — it would be his sixth since reelection — but after the failures of Barnier, Bayrou and Lecornu, such a move would almost certainly fan the flames.

The president could tap a prime minister from the left, which has long claimed its right to have a shot at governing after winning the most seats during last summer’s snap elections, but those parties could threaten his legacy.

A growing number of voices on the left and right have called on Macron to resign — though the president has ruled this option out on several occasions.

Macron has also resisted calls to dissolve the National Assembly once more and hold new elections. And while last year’s elections led to the current mess, the French leader is increasingly being urged to do so again in hopes some sort of governable majority would emerge.

“The sooner we get back to the polls, the sooner we’ll regain some stability,” National Rally president Jordan Bardella told reporters. “We can’t change governments every 48 hours.”

Anthony Lattier and Carlo Martuscelli contributed reporting.