PARIS — French far-right leader Marine Le Pen said her party would vote to topple any future prime minister that President Emmanuel Macron might appoint unless he calls new parliamentary elections.
“Each new government is a device to circumvent the will of the people,” Le Pen said Wednesday at a press conference.
Le Pen’s comments come as outgoing Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu scrambles to navigate a way out of the political crisis sparked by his resignation Monday. After accepting Lecornu’s resignation, Macron then tasked him with finding a path forward by Wednesday evening.
Le Pen’s party, the National Rally, and other political forces that think they can win a majority of seats in the currently hung National Assembly, France’s lower house of parliament, want Macron to call new snap elections.
Le Pen accused other parties of being “scared to death” of returning to the ballot box for fear that their camp could lose seats and that the National Rally could emerge strengthened from the process.
Polling shows that the National Rally remains France’s most popular political party, but the country’s two-round runoff system makes it difficult to predict how polling translates into wins at the ballot box.
Speculation has been rife since Tuesday that Macron is considering appointing a left-wing prime minister to escape the impasse. The center-left Socialist Party is seen as the strongest contender to lead that minority government, which would need to secure at least tacit support from both other parties on the left and pro-Macron centrists.
The Socialists have conditioned their participation on Macron’s willingness to suspend the unpopular 2023 pensions reform, which raised the minimum retirement age for most workers to 64. The reform is being implemented progressively, and hitting pause would freeze the minimum age at 63.
Momentum appears to be growing to in some way address the unpopular law, with Elisabeth Borne — the prime minister under whom Macron rammed through key legislation — now saying that she is in favor of a suspension.
During her press conference, Le Pen confidently predicted that the concession would be granted, calling it the only way for the presidential camp to avoid dissolving parliament. She said she would support the pause but hoped to propose an alternative pensions reform if she ever came to power.
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