French President Emmanuel Macron is bringing together some of France’s major political forces on Friday, his first initiative since the Olympic Games break to finally give the country a government.
The day will be as long as it is tense for the head of state, contested even within his own camp since he decided almost alone, the day after disastrous European elections, to dissolve the National Assembly and call early legislative elections.
He is due to open the sequence at 10:30 a.m., by receiving at the Élysée the New Popular Front (NFP), a circumstantial alliance of left-wing forces (radical left, socialists, environmentalists and communists), which created a surprise by winning 193 deputies, far however from an absolute majority (289).
He continues at 1:00 p.m. with the leaders of his camp, then the Republican right. The Macronist camp has 166 representatives.
Two other more minority formations will end the day, before new talks on Monday with the extreme right of the National Rally (RN) and its allies (142 deputies), the only ones to exclude a coalition and to prepare for the next deadlines, in particular the presidential election of 2027.
The aim of these consultations is “to determine under what conditions” the political forces can define a “broad majority”, the Élysée explained on Thursday, assuring that the president was “guarantor of the institutions”.
“Stability” is “the ability of a government not to fall at the first motion of censure tabled,” the same source insisted.
On the left, the NFP is defending tooth and nail its candidate for the post of prime minister, senior civil servant Lucie Castets, 37, who was announced as present at the Élysée on Friday. The bloc deplored on Thursday that the head of state was “procrastinating rather than drawing the consequences” of the elections.
A budget at the beginning of October
“As in all parliamentary democracies, the coalition that comes out on top must be able to form a government,” its leaders insisted. “We are ready.”
But the deadlock is total: Macron excludes appointing Lucie Castets. And the presidential camp, the right and the extreme right are threatening with a motion of censure any government including ministers from La France insoumise (LFI, radical left).
The party is seen as a bogeyman, accused in particular of complacency towards the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas, and even of anti-Semitism.
And its fiery and very divisive leader, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, has driven a new wedge into the alliance by threatening to demand the dismissal of the head of state. An initiative that has very little chance of succeeding and on which he has not been followed.
If the president sticks to his refusal of the NFP – the censure of a Castets government including rebellious ministers “is a given, it’s arithmetic”, they repeat at the top of the executive – who will lead the government?
In the center, the presidential camp does not dare to move forward. On the right, the Republicans are rather reluctant to the prospect of a government agreement. Others are more open. And the names of former ministers are circulating, even in the center-left.
The political jousting, which began before the Olympics, has resumed in earnest. With the country’s pressing need to give birth, on the 1er October, of a budget for 2025.
The left is promising a policy of rupture, notably with an increase in the minimum wage and the repeal of the very unpopular pension reform.
But Gabriel Attal, who has remained in office for six weeks to deal with current affairs, has already sent the ceiling letters granting their credits to the ministries. “Pure scandal”, “coup de force”, vociferated the NFP.
Meanwhile, the left-wing parties each held their traditional back-to-school seminars or “summer universities”. This was an opportunity for Lucie Castets, unknown to the general public, to string together appearances and build her credibility.