French Prime Minister Gabriel Attal resigned on July 16. President Emmanuel Macron accepted Attal’s resignation, but asked him to remain in post as a caretaker until a new candidate to lead the government was agreed on.
Attal is still the tenant at the Hotel Matignon, the prime minister’s official residence, and is now the longest serving caretaker in French politics.
Elections were held for the European Parliament on June 9, and parties of the populist, anti-immigration right performed well. Germany’s Alternative für Deutschland, the Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party and the Party for Freedom in the Netherlands all increased their representation.
In France, the right-wing National Rally topped the poll to win 30 of the country’s 81 EU seats, while Macron’s liberal Ensemble coalition lost nearly half its representatives. More than one-third of French voters had embraced the nationalist right represented not only by the National Rally but also by Reconquête.
Macron took this as a personal affront, and declared that he would dissolve the National Assembly and hold legislative elections at the end of June and beginning of July. The results made three things clear. First, although the National Rally had not polled as well as some had expected, it made significant gains. With its smaller allies, it mustered 142 seats out of 577. Second, Ensemble lost nearly 90 seats and ended up with 159. Third, there was an unexpected surge by a hastily assembled left-wing group under the banner of the New Popular Front, which came out on top with 180 seats.
The morning after the election, Prime Minister Attal offered his resignation, given the bruising verdict from the electorate. Macron initially refused to accept, but a week later conceded while requesting that Attal stay on temporarily until a new government could be formed. There was a political truce during the Paris Olympics, but the closing ceremony was nearly three weeks ago and Attal is still reluctantly in office.
Macron faces a thorny challenge. The prime minister of France, who leads the government and chairs the Council of Ministers, is appointed by the president, in theory with a free hand, but in effect in accordance with the political composition of the National Assembly. Although a new prime minister does not require confirmation by the legislature, the Assembly can force a government out by a vote of no confidence. But the current party balance is so divided that it is not clear what the most consensual way forward might be.
The New Popular Front has claimed that, as the largest faction in the National Assembly, it has the right to nominate the prime minister. Late in July, it proposed the name of Lucie Castets, a largely unknown 37-year-old civil servant and economist currently serving as director of finance and purchasing at Paris City Hall. Castets was described as a “leader of associative struggles for the defense and promotion of public services” with a background in “fighting tax evasion and financial crime.”
The president, unimpressed, dismissed her candidacy. “The question is not a name; the question is what kind of majority can emerge from the National Assembly,” he said. His implication, probably correct, was that the New Popular Front does not have the support of enough deputies for Castets to be a credible or sustainable prime minister. He alluded to the reelection of Yaël Braun-Pivet of his own Renaissance party as presiding officer of the Assembly, ahead of the New Popular Front’s André Chassaigne.
The New Popular Front’s furthest left element, Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s La France Insoumise (France Unbowed), absurdly accused the president of attempting an “unacceptable anti-democratic coup.” In fact, Macron is practicing realism. The parties of the center and right have already vowed to vote down any government led by the New Popular Front. It is pointless arguing with parliamentary arithmetic.
But where does the president turn? A prime minister from the right-wing National Rally would be as unacceptable to him as to the Assembly. Macron has called on the left to “cooperate with other political forces,” but that thinly veiled request to back down has been poorly received. A spokesman for the president said he would hold no further talks with La France Insoumise or the National Rally, nor with the center-right, the once-dominant Republicans.
Time is running out. A draft budget must be presented to the National Assembly at the beginning of October to take effect on Jan. 1, 2025. French politics has long drawn an invisible but solid cordon sanitaire around the far-left and (especially) the far-right, but the current composition of the Assembly leaves Macron trapped in a confined center too small to find a viable government. Some names bandied around sound stale: Xavier Bertrand, a middle-ranking minister under President Jacques Chirac; 73-year-old former foreign minister Michel Barnier; socialist Bernard Cazeneuve, prime minister for six months under the almost-forgotten President François Hollande.
If he has the inclination for self-reflection, Macron must be wondering if his decision to call a snap election was wholly wise. The National Rally did not sweep to victory, as some predicted, but Macron’s presidency runs until May 2027 (after which he must step down). He must find someone who can survive as prime minister for at least a year or two at the sufferance of the National Assembly, but it looks as if every week may be a wearying struggle with his power base severely diminished.
Eliot Wilson is a freelance writer on politics and international affairs and the co-founder of Pivot Point Group. He was senior official in the U.K. House of Commons from 2005 to 2016, including serving as a clerk of the Defence Committee and secretary of the U.K. delegation to the NATO Parliamentary Assembly.