French President Emmanuel Macron began a series of tough consultations with political leaders on Friday, hoping to form a viable governing coalition after last month’s inconclusive election.
Six weeks after snap elections that saw Macron lose his relative parliamentary majority, he has still not named a new prime minister. His first major task will be to submit next year’s budget plan to the National Assembly.
The left-wing New Popular Front (NFP), which emerged as the largest party after the elections, wants 37-year-old economist Lucie Castets to become the new prime minister.
But Macron’s forces have shown little interest in the idea, preferring a possible alliance with the traditional right.
“We have come here to remind the president how important it is to respect the election results and to get the country out of the paralysis,” Castets said when she arrived at the Elysée with other NFP representatives on Friday.
She and her allies were willing to find a “compromise, since no one has an absolute majority” and would work towards “stability”, Castets said.
Manuel Bompard, coordinator of the far-left party France Unbowed (LFI), had also warned before the meeting with Macron: “We are not going to negotiate with him.”
Instead, he announced: “We will tell him that there is no alternative to the appointment of Lucie Castets.”
– ‘Ready to form coalitions’ –
But allies of Macron – who said after the election that “nobody had won” – argue the left-wing bloc is too weak to claim the post of prime minister and instead hope to form a majority around a centrist figure.
As she left the Élysée, Castets told reporters that she had indeed “sensed the temptation that the president might want to form his own government”.
She herself was “prepared to form coalitions from today” and to talk to the other political groups.
Macron had acknowledged during the talks that all parties opposed to the far right “are completely legitimate to govern”, said Socialist leader Olivier Faure.
France has never been without a head of government after a parliamentary election, after Macron said he would not prioritize finding a leader during the Paris Olympics, which end on August 11.
Prime Minister Gabriel Attal leads an interim government.
Opposition figures have sharply criticised Macron for investing so much time in the matter, with Green Party Senator Yannick Jadot even calling the president’s stance “a denial of democracy”.
Even some of Macron’s allies have grown impatient.
An official in his office stressed on Thursday that “the president is on the side of the French people and the guarantor of the institutions.”
The talks at the Élysée, scheduled for Friday and Monday, will bring together representatives from across the political spectrum.
Macron’s office has not yet given any indication of when the president will announce his choice for prime minister, but observers expect him to do so sometime next week.
Whoever is appointed, he or she must be able to survive a vote of no confidence in parliament and submit a bill for the 2025 budget to parliament by October 1 (the legal deadline).
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