Macron refuses to appoint a New Popular Front government, what now?

More than 50 days after the legislative elections, France continues with a Government and a Prime Minister in place. After the Olympic Games TruceLast Friday, Emmanuel Macron began a first series of consultations with the leaders of the main political parties, at the end of which the head of state announced that he was ruling out the proposal to appoint Lucie Castets, representative of the New Popular Front, the coalition of political parties. The left has the largest number of deputies.

“Institutional stability means that this option should not be retained,” the Elysée announced on Monday. through a statementA government “based solely on the program and parties proposed by the alliance with the most deputies, the New Popular Front, would be immediately censored by all the other groups represented in the National Assembly,” the president justified.

How is the Prime Minister appointed in France?

The appointment of the Prime Minister is the exclusive prerogative of the Head of State and the Constitution does not require a vote of investiture or a vote of confidence in Parliament after the appointment. Nor does it impose any conditions on the President regarding his appointment, nor a time limit for doing so.

In a country accustomed to absolute majorities in Parliament, the fragmentation of the current National Assembly This forces us to look for new formulas, after Macron unexpectedly called legislative elections in June. Today, in the absence of large parliamentary majorities, Emmanuel Macron has decided to set a precondition for the appointment of a new prime minister: that there be an agreement between the different political forces in order to guarantee the ability to withstand a motion of censure.

If the motion of censure is activated, the vote of 289 deputies (out of the 577 that make up the lower house) would force the government to resign and the president to accept the resignation. In this context, Macron hides behind the fact that the rest of the political parties – including his party – have announced that they would vote to censure any government of the New Popular Front (NFP).

During the last legislative electionsThe NFP obtained 193 deputies, insufficient to resist a potential motion of censure voted by the presidential coalition (166), the right (47) and the extreme right (142). Thus, the head of state is both judge and jury in the current process of forming the government: the parliamentary blockade of the NFP, in which his party participates, is the reason he uses to prevent the New Popular Front from attempting to form an executive.

How do other parties justify their blocking of the NFP?

Firstly, the presence of France rebels (LFI), this is the argument used by the center and right-wing parties to deny the NFP the possibility of governing. The possibility of seeing ministers from LFI has been cited as a red line by various political leaders, including Macron and the current Prime Minister Gabriel Attal.

But on Sunday, LFI leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon surprised by proposing an NFP government without the presence of the insumisos, but with the support of his party. Thus eliminating the obstacle that Macron and the right had erected. This announcement by Mélenchon took the party leaders by surprise and it was necessary to change the discourse: the problem was no longer the presence of the rebels, but the program.

Gabriel Attal was the first to downplay Mélenchon's “pretensions of openness” and said that, even without a presence in the government, the rebels would demand “the pure and simple application of their program, without openness or commitment.” A statement that contradicts various statements by Lucie Castets in which she proposed seeking parliamentary agreements outside the coalition, also proposing a “more collaborative” working method for the Assembly.

On the other hand, Jordan Bardella and Marine Le Pen confirmed on Monday, after their meeting with Macron, their intention to censure any left-wing government, with or without the presence of LFI. “We are not going to allow a policy that seeks to significantly worsen immigration, to regularize illegal immigrants, to abolish the anti-squatter law and other things that the majority of the country rejects,” Le Pen warned.

How does Macron hope to resolve the blockade?

From the beginning, Emmanuel Macron declared his desire to promote a government that would have the support of centrist deputies, the right and part of the NFP (excluding France Insoumise). The president stressed his rejection of the central measures of the NFP program, such as the cancellation of the last pension reform, approved against public opinion and that the progressive coalition could eliminate with its votes and those of the extreme right.

While the right has shown itself to be in favour of a parliamentary pact for a technical government – ​​without being part of the said Executive – the coalition of progressive parties maintains its unity and has announced that it will vote against any Prime Minister who does not do so. Lucie Castets. Only a part of the Socialist Party (PS), hostile to Mélenchon, seems willing to break with the NFP. However, the secretary general of the PS, Olivier Faure, does not belong to this current; in fact, he was one of the main actors in the union of the left.

Following this strategy, Gabriel Attal – who, in addition to being Prime Minister, is at the head of the Macronist party – reached out to a part of the progressive forces, assuring them that he was “willing to evolve” in methods and that he supports “the appointment of a Prime Minister who does not come from [sus] rows.” The names of two socialists, Bernard Cazeneuve and Karim Bouamrane, are in the running. In recent days, the hypothesis of a technocrat, from a large institution and without links to political parties, has also been raised as a possible solution.

At present, the President of the Republic has called for new negotiations with the Socialist Party (PS), the French Communist Party (PCF) and Europe Ecologie-Les Verts to try to find “ways” of cooperation with the parties of the presidential bloc. The rebels were not invited, nor was the National Group of Marine Le Pen and her ally Éric Ciotti.

What was the PFN's reaction?

The Elysée's statement sparked an avalanche of criticism from the New Popular Front parties, who refused to attend the second round of consultations and announced that they would only return to the Elysée to “discuss the details of cohabitation”. “We are faced with a President of the Republic who wants to be president, prime minister and party leader all at once. “The institutions cannot function like this,” Lucie Castets denounced Tuesday morning on public radio France Inter.


LFI deputies, for their part, announced that they would present a motion of impeachment against Emmanuel Macron in the National Assembly (even if the viability of this option, in the current circumstances, is slim). Several LFI members, as well as the leader of the Communist Party, Fabien Roussel, called for “a large popular mobilization” for September 7 and asked “the French to mobilize, in the streets, in Parliament, in their workplaces”, in front of the prefectures and in the offices of the deputies.

In the same spirit, the leader of the socialists, Olivier Faure, also announced Tuesday on France 2 his participation in these demonstrations (even if a part of the PS has distanced itself from the demonstrations). A few days ago, Faure saved on Twitter a sentence from Alain Delon's character in the famous film The Leopardto sum up Emmanuel Macron's position: “Everything must change so that nothing changes.”



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