After two months of political upheaval, President Emmanuel Macron is enjoying a summer respite. The head of state is spending the summer between the presidential residence at Fort Brégançon and Paris, where he has been regularly spotted. get excited and take pictures with the French Olympic champions.
A few days before the start of the Olympic Games, in its first televised intervention After the legislative elections, Macron had for the first time acknowledged his party's defeat in the elections, while stating that “no one had won”, with no bloc having an absolute majority. The president called for a “political truce” during the two weeks of competition and announced his intention to appoint a prime minister “in mid-August” to try to build an alliance between the different parties.
Since then, Macron and members of the (interim) government have avoided talking about politics and focused on supporting the victories of French athletes and the successes of the organization of the event. In any case, the Olympic Games have been the center of attention in the last two weeks, overshadowing national politics. “Emmanuel Macron is ridiculous,” he denounced a few days ago to Release Europe Ecologie-les Verts leader Marine Tondelier. “After saying that sport should not be politicized, he does nothing else.”
In general, the image conveyed by the Olympic Games is that of a popular successwith a profusion of tricolor and Marseille flags. AND an audience dedicated to the successes of French athleteswhether by following the tests live or on the giant screens of the fan zones which were activated throughout France.
The parliamentary majority puzzle
Thus, between celebrations with athletes in Paris and the sunshine of the Mediterranean coast, Emmanuel Macron continues to prepare for the decisive weeks that accompany the end of the Olympic Games. Several French media outlets point out that the head of state is looking for a specific profile: a person who is not part of his party and capable of forming a broad alliance including deputies from the right and the center-left.
THE legislative pact proposal presented by the right-wing deputies in the weeks following the elections has reinforced in recent weeks the hypothesis of a candidate from the Gaullist right at the head of the new Executive. But the parliamentary fragmentation also requires negotiating the support (or abstention) of a good number of left-wing deputies.
If the name of Xavier Bertrand (conservative president of the Haute-France region and former minister under Chirac and Sarkozy) is the one that comes up the most, others have also been mentioned such as that of the former socialist prime minister Bernard Cazeneuve or that of Michel Barniermain European Brexit negotiator.
For its part, the left-wing New Popular Front (NFP), the coalition that obtained the most votes in the last legislative elections, continues to claim priority in the negotiations for the formation of a government and the figure of the his candidate, Lucie Castetsas the best placed to lead this executive. For the time being, Macron has chosen to ignore the senior official, who is taking her first steps in national politics and who, for the moment, does not enjoy any support outside the progressive bloc.
In addition, Macron continues to try to exclude La France Insoumise (LFI) from any government negotiations and to force the NFP to give up part of its program as a condition for reaching compromises. “The country's urgency is not to destroy what we have just done, but to build and move forward,” he warned in July about the New Popular Front's proposals.
Opposition movements
During the Olympic break, Castets took the opportunity to launch a campaign combining travel and media appearances, to make yourself known and strengthen the legitimacy of his candidacy for the head of the Government in the eyes of the public. But beyond Macron's rejection, the current financial director of Paris City Hall must deal with a complex situation within the coalition, with a fundamental disagreement between France Insoumise and the Socialist Party (PS) on the nature of the future government.
In their statements, the LFI leaders demand the application of a policy of rupture, applying all possible measures included in the PFN program through the regulatory instruments available to the Executive. On the other hand, the PS defends an agreement with a part of the Macronist deputies so that – with their support or abstention – they allow the formation of a relatively stable government.
In this sense, Castets, who is not part of any party and who has established herself as a consensus candidate, is trying to maintain a difficult balance between the two main NFP parties through her statements. “We do not want a motion of censure, but we will implement our program,” he said two weeks ago in an interview with BFMTV.
A few days later, in an interview with The Sunday Tribunequalified his desire to make “commitments” with all parties, except with the far-right National Rally of Marine Le Pen.
At the same time, Gabriel Attal, still Prime Minister, is working with the deputies of the centrist coalition on an “action pact”: a five-page document that includes a series of measures in favor of respect for secularism, the defense of purchasing power, taxation, justice, the defense of public services, ecology and the strengthening of security. A document that can serve as a basis for negotiations and agreements with other political parties.
Attal himself has been one of the main leaders of Emmanuel Macron's party in warning that the head of state will have to adapt to a new situation, with a change in the “center of gravity” of political decisions, which will move towards Parliament. In the final phase of his second term, the president will not be able to control politics either by an absolute majority in the Assembly, as he did until 2022, or by an absolute majority in the Assembly. by decreesas has been the case over the past two years.