French President Emmanuel Macron begins talks with leaders of various parties on Friday in a last-ditch attempt to end the six-week political stalemate following early parliamentary elections, French media reported.
A full six weeks after the snap election, in which Macron lost his relative parliamentary majority, he has yet to name a new prime minister, whose first major task will be to present a budget plan for next year to the National Assembly.
The left-wing New Popular Front (FNP), which became the largest faction after the election, has said it wants 37-year-old economist Lucie Castets to be the new prime minister.
Before the Paris Olympics, Macron rejected Castets as a potential candidate to head the country’s future government, which angered the left-wing coalition. Castets said as she arrived at the Elysee palace on Friday, accompanied by other NFP representatives:
We have come here to remind the president how important it is to respect the election result and to pull the country out of paralysis.
She and her allies are ready to find “a compromise given that no one has an absolute majority” and will work to achieve “stability,” Castets said.
Ahead of the meeting with Macron, Manuel Bompard, coordinator of the left-wing France Unbowed (LFI) party, also warned:
We’re not going to negotiate with him.
Instead, he announced, “we’ll tell him that there is no alternative to Lucie Castets’s appointment.”
But allies of Macron, who said after the election that “nobody won,” argue that the left-wing bloc is too weak to qualify for the prime minister’s post and hope to form a majority around a centrist figure.
Leaving the Elysee Palace, Castets told reporters that she had indeed found “a temptation for the president to build his own government.” She said she is “ready to build coalitions starting today” and to negotiate with other political groups.
Macron recognised during the talks that all parties opposed to the far-right were “fully legitimate to run the country,” leading socialist Olivier Faure said.
The current period is France’s longest ever without a head of government after legislative elections, after Macron said he would not prioritise finding such a leader during the Paris Olympics, which ended on August 11.
The New Popular Front coalition of leftist parties warned that it would seek the ouster of French President Emmanuel Macron if he did not endorse Lucie Castets for prime minister. Mathilde Panot, leader of the parliamentary faction of the French Unbowed party, said:
If Emmanuel Macron does not appoint Lucie Castets, the candidate of the coalition that received the most votes in the election, as prime minister, we and the New Popular Front will advocate impeachment.
She recalled Article 68 of the constitution, according to which parliament has the right to remove the president from power if he fails to fulfil his key duties.
