President Emmanuel Macron has opened a ‘new cycle of consultations’ for a new prime minister after he rejected a left-wing candidate deemed to be a risk to “institutional stability”.
Yet, the consultation has been boycotted by the far-left, and the far-right Rassemblement National was not invited.
It comes after Mr Macron rejected Lucie Castets, from the Nouveau Front Populaire (NFP), and pressure on the president is growing, well over a month after he accepted the resignation of current Prime Minister Gabriel Attal.
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Possible scenarios (as outlined by the public service media FranceInfo) include:
A large coalition, without LFI and the RN
In a press release, the Elysée states that a cross-party group had “mapped out possible avenues for coalition and joint work between different political sensibilities”.
This group included the Libertés, indépendants, outre-mer et territoires group (LIOT), the Ensemble pour la République, MoDem, Horizons, Radicals and UDI parties.
It claimed that “the Socialist Party, the ecologists and the Communists have not at this stage proposed ways of cooperating with the other political forces” and that “it is now their responsibility to do so”.
This appears to suggest that the president wants to move towards a ‘grand coalition’, which would bring together most of the parties from the centre-right and moderate left. This would not, as a result, include the far-right Rassemblement National (RN) and far-left La France Insoumise (LFI).
However, the parties that are yet to propose ways of cooperating have said that they have no intention of doing so.
“We are not going to continue with this circus,” said Marine Tondelier, national secretary of the Ecologistes, to FranceInfo. Olivier Faure, the first secretary of the Parti Socialiste (PS), said that he would not let the Socialists become “the auxiliaries of a Macron government that is coming to an end”.
Yet, some in the party are calling for talks to resume, and the leader also said it would not join protests against Mr Macron.
Similarly, some object to such a coalition, as it would leave the ‘extremes’ (Rassemblement National and LFI) as the only real ‘alternative’ at upcoming elections.
An agreement between the Right and Centrists?
Another option is for the president’s Ensemble group to forge an alliance with Les Républicains (LR, right-wing).
Adding the LR’s 47 seats to the president’s 166 would result in 213 seats. This is more than the number of seats in opposition, but not enough to achieve an absolute majority of 289 MPs.
President of the Horizons party (centre-right), former Prime Minister Edouard Philippe, suggested this idea at the start of the summer. He said he would be in favour of “a technical agreement” with the president’s party, as it would “enable us to move forward and manage the country's affairs for at least a year”.
Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin has also said (in an interview with Europe 1), that “it would not bother [me] in the slightest [to have] a right-leaning prime minister”.
However, the left-leaning MPs in the presidential camp appear less convinced, and the Républicains are yet to assent to this idea.
New LR Assembly chairman, Laurent Wauquiez, is keen to show strong leadership and enable bills to pass, “to prevent the country from coming to a standstill”, but has rejected the idea of any coalition with Macron’s party.
“We are independent and we will remain so,” he said in July. Yet, LR leaders are set to meet Macron’s party for new talks today (August 28).
A government of ‘experts’?
Another possible solution suggested could be to form a ‘less political’ team, and instead assemble a government of experts chosen for their experience in their field, likely led by a senior civil servant.
“It is a fallback solution when you cannot take power,” said Benjamin Morel, a lecturer in public law at Panthéon-Assas University, to Le Figaro.
Recently, France has not taken this option, but historian Jean Garrigues added that “Michel Debré's first government of the Fifth Republic (1959-1962) was…a government of experts”, chosen for their skills rather than their political leanings.
Italy’s government has had several similar governmental set-ups since World War Two, including under Mario Draghi from February 2021 to October 2022, after several weeks of crisis linked to Covid-19.
In France, such a government could struggle, especially if it is supposed to be politically neutral, but still needing to undertake important tasks such as passing the annual budget.
The departure of Emmanuel Macron?
The La France Insoumise party has repeatedly called for Mr Macron to be impeached, and is also calling for a protest against what the party calls “the autocracy of Emmanuel Macron”.
It has joined the call from the student unions l’Union étudiante and l'Union syndicale lycéenne to mount a large protest on September 7. The unions, along with trade associations, say they are calling for the action as they are “committed to the defence of democracy”. LFI in particular is calling for “a firm response from French society to the exceptional gravity of the situation”.
In mid-August, LFI leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon wrote, in La Tribune Dimanche, that the president had “not recognised the result of the election, which placed the New Popular Front at the top of the polls”, and was failing in his mandate to honour the result.
However, to impeach the president, the procedure would need a two-thirds majority in the National Assembly and the Senate. This is unlikely. Even if it were to happen, the case would then be passed to the high court, which would again have to decide by a two-thirds majority.
In this case, some have suggested that Mr Macron could resign - although again, this looks unlikely. This would also still leave the Assemblée in deadlock, without a prime minister, as it cannot be dissolved before July 8, 2025 - Article 12 of the Constitution stipulates that ‘no new dissolution may take place in the year following [the] elections’.
This rule applies even if a new president were to come to power.
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The status quo and continued consultations?
Mr Macron is continuing consultations in a bid to break the deadlock, although François Bayrou, president of the MoDem party, has said that he believes Mr Macron has committed “a methodological error” by seeking to negotiate with so many parties. This has reinforced “the stranglehold of the parties”, he said, preventing a consensus from being reached.
On August 27, Mr Macron told a group of LIOT MPs that he was “well aware of the urgency of the situation”.
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In the meantime, Gabriel Attal remains as prime minister, and is preparing the extremely-delayed 2025 budget.
