By Elizabeth Pineau and Ingrid Melander
PARIS/TOURS (Reuters) – French President Emmanuel Macron will meet with party leaders from the left, centre and right on Friday with the aim of finally giving the country a new prime minister almost seven weeks after inconclusive parliamentary elections.
Whoever Macron appoints, it will be a difficult task, as parliamentary approval of the 2025 budget is one of many challenges at a time when France is under pressure from the European Commission and bond markets to reduce its deficit.
Who will become prime minister – and whether they will succeed in getting Parliament to support any reforms without a clear majority – is still a completely open question.
Macron’s gamble to call early parliamentary elections proved to be a mistake: in the vote on June 30 and July 7, his centrist coalition lost dozens of seats, leading to a stalemate in parliament.
Outgoing Prime Minister Gabriel Attal’s government was steering France through the Paris Olympics in a caretaker capacity. But the break is over and Macron will appoint a prime minister after those talks, which will continue on Monday, his office said.
Macron has so far ignored the candidate of the left-wing alliance New Popular Front (NFP), which came out on top in the elections, on the grounds that the NFP, despite its leading position, is still far from an absolute majority in parliament.
Instead, he called on politicians to reach agreements across party lines to form a government that would have a solid majority.
“Faced with this parliament made up of minority parties, political leaders must get along with each other,” said an official in Macron’s Elysée office. The election “forces everyone to change course and enter into a coalition logic.”
The NFP wants its candidate Lucie Castets, a 37-year-old senior civil servant, to be appointed prime minister.
“We will remind the president of his obligation to respect the decision of the French,” Castets said late Thursday at a rally in the western French city of Tours.
“We won these elections, whether Emmanuel Macron likes it or not,” said Green Party leader Marine Tondelier at the same rally.
Communist Party leader Fabien Roussel, whose party is also part of the NFP alliance, said on Friday that failure to appoint Castet would trigger a serious crisis.
Castet’s chances of getting the job, however, are slim. A source close to Macron told Reuters earlier this month that the president believes the focus of the new parliament will be center or center-right.
Other possible candidates include conservative regional president Xavier Bertrand and former Socialist Prime Minister Bernard Cazeveuve, sources said. French media recently named Karim Bouamrane, the Socialist mayor of an impoverished Paris suburb, as another possible candidate.
Macron has often nominated unexpected prime ministers. The French constitution states that he is free to decide who he appoints – but they must be able to survive votes of no confidence from the opposition.
(Reporting by Ingrid Melander in Tours and Elizabeth Pineau in Paris; additional reporting by Benoit Van Overstraeten; editing by Michael Perry)
