French President Emmanuel Macron resumed talks with parliamentary political parties on Monday, which began on Friday and which the Elysee Palace said will conclude with the announcement of a prime minister. Pressure is mounting to appoint a government now, after the latest legislative elections left the country without a clear majority. On the last day of talks, the president met with the leadership of the far-right National Rally (RN), who confirmed that they would censure “any left-wing government.” The founder of the leftist party La France Insoumise, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, opened the door on Saturday to the formation of a left-wing government without ministers from his party to overcome the veto of other parties.
Macron also met with RN ally Eric Ciotti, who belongs to the right-wing wing of the Republicans (LR), with the president of the National Assembly, Yaël Braun-Pivet, and with his counterpart in the Senate, Gérard Larcher. What will happen next? For the moment, the question remains. The head of state could hold another round of consultations on Tuesday or address the country on television to clarify the situation and explain why he needs more time. The leaders of the left-wing alliance New Popular Front (NFP) announced, however, that they would not meet with Macron again unless it was to discuss a government with their candidate, Lucie Castets, at the head.
The second round of voting on July 7 left the country in limbo, with a parliamentary chamber divided into three blocs, all far from the absolute majority of 289 deputies. The left-wing alliance, which brings together La France Insoumise (LFI), socialists, communists and ecologists, won the largest number of seats in the Assembly (193 out of 577) and is therefore demanding to appoint the prime minister. But Macron has so far ruled out naming the candidate of the united left, with whom he already met on Friday.
The leader argues that, as there is no majority bloc, a majority coalition should be formed with deputies from the centre, the left and the moderate right. The objective, he stressed, is to obtain a “solid”, stable and “necessarily plural” majority. He said this in a letter to the French people in mid-July, and just before the Paris Olympic Games, in a television interview on 23 July.
The fundamental law does not set a deadline for the head of state to appoint a prime minister. But time is running out. The government has been in office since 16 July and the situation is beginning to generate a certain amount of impatience among the population. The Paralympic Games in Paris start on Wednesday and France must approve a budget for 2025 and present it to the lower house of parliament by the first Tuesday in October at the latest.
In an attempt to unblock the situation and clarify the positions of the various political forces – or to gain time – Macron launched a series of consultations on Friday. He started with the NFP, followed by the members of the presidential bloc, who won 166 seats, and the conservative party The Republicans, with 47 seats. On Monday, it was the turn of the RN, which, despite leading all the polls, came in third with 126 seats in the last election. The far-right leader Marine Le Pen went to the presidential palace with her successor, Jordan Bardella.
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After the meeting, Le Pen accused Macron of being responsible for the “political chaos” that the country is experiencing and stressed that the RN will vote a motion of censure against “any left-wing government”. In recent days, both LR and members of the presidential bloc have indicated that their groups would censure an executive if it included members of LFI, the party with the most weight in the NFP. At the weekend, Mélenchon made a dramatic statement and asked whether there would be no veto on a left-wing government if his party agreed not to join it. “If they say no, we will be able to say that the rebellious ministers are simply a pretext, and that what you do not want is the programme” of the NFP, he said in a television interview.
The absence of LFI ministers in a new government “changes absolutely nothing,” stressed Le Pen. “The New Popular Front is led by La France Insoumise,” she added. Reactions to Mélenchon’s question were heard over the weekend. Macron’s ally, the centrist François Bayrou, said that opposition to an NFP government was not so much due to the presence of LFI but to the alliance’s programme. “It is a dangerous programme for the country,” he said. The left-wing coalition proposes, among other things, repealing Macron’s pension reform – which raised the retirement age from 62 to 64 and sparked a wave of demonstrations in the country – and raising the minimum wage to 1,600 euros. The current minimum wage is around 1,400 euros.
Macron is not legally obliged to name a prime minister in the next few hours. But the pressure is mounting. The end of the round of consultations coincided with the return – the start of the school year – of Medef, the French employers’ association. “Business leaders are worried and we must not make them nervous with a political situation that is murky and lasts too long,” said its president, Patrick Martin.
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