PARIS — French President Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday forcefully denied that the left should be given the opportunity to form a government after it won the most seats in this summer’s snap parliamentary elections.
In his first television interview since the vote took place, Macron quickly slapped down the pan-left New Popular Front (NFP) alliance’s candidate for prime minister — named just minutes before the interview began — and cast doubt on whether the left, which fell short of an absolute majority, “had a majority, whatsoever.”
The French president seemed to frame his thinking as rising above the political fray, saying the legislature needed “to do what all European democracies do, which is not in our tradition … to be able to make compromises.”
The comments infuriated his adversaries, with Green leader Marine Tondelier slamming Macron as “totally disconnect[ed] from reality.” Socialist leader Olivier Faure described the president’s interview as “a criminal diversion.”
After days of bickering over who to field as a candidate for prime minister, the NFP on Tuesday achieved a last-minute breakthrough before Macron was set to address the nation, backing a little-known Paris city official, Lucie Castets.
Macron responded by questioning whether Castets could win support in the parliament beyond the left, which has repeatedly said it should be given the opportunity to form a government after winning the most seats in the June 30 and July 7 election rounds.
“That’s not the topic. It’s not about a name given by a political party,” Macron said during an interview on France 2. “It’s about what majority can be built in the National Assembly so a French government is able to pass reforms, pass a budget and get France to move forward.”
By tradition, the French president nominates a prime minister from the party that has a majority of lawmakers in the National Assembly. But with no party or alliance winning an majority in the most recent voting, French politics have been thrown into disarray, with the left and Macron’s liberals warring over who should govern the country.
Macron added he was not planning to appoint a prime minister until mid-August, to provide stability during the July 26 to Aug. 11 Olympic Games that France is hosting. The country has been led by a caretaker government since the French president accepted the resignation of then-PM Gabriel Attal after the centrists lost dozens of seats in the snap election.
But Macron’s decision to postpone appointing a new government further angered his rivals on the left. “Emmanuel Macron is locking everything until mid-August so that he won’t have to admit we arrived first,” left-wing lawmaker Sandrine Rousseau wrote on X.
For his part, Macron slammed the far left’s decision to table a bill to repeal his flagship pensions reform with the support of Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally. “This is topsy-turvy, I don’t have the feeling [the far left] told us they would be voting bills with the far right,” he said.
Playing the long game
During the interview, in a studio overlooking the Eiffel Tower, Macron expressed no regrets about calling a snap election following his party’s defeat in the June European election. The French president’s gamble, which took everyone — including his own prime minister — by surprise, further weakened him as France welcomes the world to the Games.
“I took this decision with awareness, because the National Assembly no longer looked like French society … and because everyone was saying there would be a vote of no confidence in the autumn during the budget,” he said.
As for the future, Macron didn’t say what kind of coalition he had in mind, but flagged immigration and security — two core issues for conservatives — as needing to be addressed. Such comments are likely to relaunch speculation that Macron’s liberals seek an alliance with the conservatives to govern France.
Macron won a key battle last week when a cross-party compromise was reached with the Republican Right political group, which was created after some conservatives joined the far right, to reelect centrist Yaël Braun-Pivet as president of the National Assembly.
Defiantly upbeat, the French president called the Olympic Games “a metaphor” for the political challenges facing France and the need for cross-party cooperation.
“I could have said it’s impossible to organize an Olympic Games with a Socialist mayor, a conservative Paris region president, and a French president from the center,” Macron said.
“But we did it.”
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