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President Emmanuel Macron said he would not appoint a new government until after the Olympics, to avoid causing “disruption” at a time when France is hosting the world’s most-watched sporting event.
Macron called for what he called an “Olympic political truce”, referring to the historical tradition of suspending hostilities during the Olympics, and said it was important that the current caretaker government and ministers stay in office because they had worked hard to plan the games.
“We cannot change the situation until mid-August because we would be afraid of causing chaos,” he said in an interview with France 2 television ahead of Friday’s opening ceremony.
The comments came just two weeks after Macron’s surprise election call left parliament in limbo with no party or coalition with anything close to a majority that would give it a clear mandate to form a government.
Macron’s centrist coalition suffered a major blow in the polls, losing around 80 seats and coming in second behind the left-wing coalition New Popular Front (NFP).
Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally came in third, making it the largest single party in the National Assembly.
Since then, Macron has been biding his time, leaving the eurozone’s second-largest economy in political limbo.
He argued that “no one could win the election” because none of the three parties were close to the 289 seats needed for a majority, and called instead for a broad “governing agreement” to end the political deadlock.
Macron called on politicians from the centre-left Socialist party (PS) to the conservative Republican party (LR) to align with his centre-right bloc and instructed caretaker Prime Minister Gabriel Attal to hold talks with party leaders.
But it got off to a rocky start as the Socialists rejected the demands and the president insisted that the NFP must be allowed to form a government since it won the most seats in parliament, around 180.
The Republicans have shown a somewhat submissive stance, backing President Macron’s candidate to be re-elected as speaker of the National Assembly, but have refused to form a coalition government.
In France, the constitution gives the president the right to appoint the prime minister, and although it does not stipulate how he or she should do so, it is customary for the president to nominate a politician from the party with the largest number of members of parliament.
Left-wing politicians reacted with outrage to Macron’s remarks because, with just an hour until the interview, the NFP was finally able to put an end to its internal squabbles and propose its candidate for prime minister.
The NFP is made up of four parties, and its two largest, the far-left Indefatigable France and the moderate Socialist Party, have been fighting over who should lead the government, exposing deep divisions.
After both factions publicly rejected the name of the other’s candidate in recent weeks, the NFP agreed on Tuesday to nominate Lucy Castets, a little-known civil servant who is not affiliated with either the Socialist Party or the LFI.
She is the official in the Paris mayor’s office overseeing finances and procurement, and has previously called for increased funding for public services and spoke out against Macron’s unpopular proposal to raise the retirement age.
Asked whether Castets’ name being mentioned would give the left an opportunity to form a government, Macron dodged the question.
“It is a mistake to say that the NFP has some kind of majority,” he said. “The issue is not the name, it’s what kind of majority in parliament can we have to be able to form a working and stable government.”
Castets on Wednesday urged Macron to appoint him as prime minister, calling his refusal a “denial of democracy” and rejecting a scenario in which the left would govern with Macron’s centrist bloc.
“You can’t have a coalition between those who want to invest more in public services and those who want to cut it. And you can’t have a coalition between those who want to make sure that everyone pays their fair share of tax, rather than giving preferential treatment to the wealthy,” she told France Interradio.
Marine Tondelier, leader of the NFP-affiliated Green party, said Macron must “come out of denial” and accept that his centrist party had lost the election.
“We won, we got our platform, we got our prime minister,” she said Tuesday. “Voters are now waiting for the social justice and environmental justice measures they have asked for. The president cannot stonewall like this.”
