Expressing himself for the first time three days after deadlocked legislative elections, President Emmanuel Macron of France said on Wednesday that “a little time” would be needed to build a “broad gathering” of what he called “republican forces” able to form a coalition government.
Just 16 days from the opening of the Paris Olympics, it was unclear whether Mr. Macron had in mind a delay that would mean no new government was in place when the games begin. For now he has asked Prime Minister Gabriel Attal, whose resignation he rejected, to continue in a caretaker capacity.
In a letter to the French people, made public before its scheduled publication on Thursday in regional newspapers, Mr. Macron said of the election he abruptly called last month: “nobody won it.” That seemed certain to irk the New Popular Front, a resurgent left-wing alliance that came in first with about 180 seats in the National Assembly.
The alliance was well short of the 289 seats needed for an absolute majority, and was not victorious in the sense of having the means to govern, but the New Popular Front’s leaders said they believed the group won and have said it would name its choice for prime minister this week.
The letter made clear that, if that happens, Mr. Macron is almost certain to reject the left’s choice, raising political tensions that are already high.
Under the Constitution of the Fifth Republic, the president names the prime minister, and there is no time limit for this choice. But up to now France has not had the culture of other European countries with parliamentary rather than presidential systems, like Italy or the Netherlands, where long negotiation on a coalition government and its agenda regularly occur.
The election left the National Assembly divided into three large blocs — the left, Mr. Macron’s center and Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally — with no obvious path to conciliation. Although Mr. Macron, who is in Washington for the NATO summit, appealed in his letter for a “sincere and loyal dialogue to build a solid majority,” nothing since the election has suggested that a path to compromise exists.
Mr. Macron appears to be moving toward a potentially explosive clash with the left, particularly the France Unbowed party of Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the combative leader of the largest and most left-wing group in the victorious alliance.
The president has made clear he does not consider France Unbowed to be part of the “republican forces” in France, any more than Ms. Le Pen’s National Rally.
The party therefore is apparently not among those invited in the letter to come together to form a coalition, in line with recent statements by Mr. Macron.
At a news conference last month, just after he called the election, Mr. Macron said the “extreme left” was guilty of “antisemitism, factionalism” and, “at a deep level, a de facto break with the values of the Republic.”
It is because of the incompatibility of its values with the Republic, as Mr. Macron sees it, that the party cannot be part of the dialogue that he hopes will now begin, officials close to him have said.
The new National Assembly is scheduled to gather for the first time on July 18.
Mr. Mélenchon has since the Hamas terrorist attack of Oct. 7 accused Yaël Braun-Pivet, the Jewish president of the National Assembly, of “camping out in Tel Aviv to encourage the massacre” in Gaza, and described Élisabeth Borne, the former French prime minister and daughter of a Holocaust survivor, as expressing “a foreign point of view.” He denies he is an antisemite.
He is a firebrand politician and gifted speaker with a large and passionate following, particularly among young people and in the suburbs around the big cities, where many Muslim immigrant families live. Believing himself victorious in the election, Mr. Mélenchon will not go quietly. “I intend to govern this country,” he said last month.
Even those on the moderate left who are outraged by some of Mr. Mélenchon’s statements and views consider that the equivalency Mr. Macron draws between Ms. Le Pen’s anti-immigrant party of quasi-fascist roots and France Unbowed is unjustifiable. If the National Rally, formerly the National Front, traces its roots to the collaborationist Vichy regime during World War II, the left has no such taint.
“I fear Mélenchon will try to take the battle to the streets,” said Thierry Dana, a former French ambassador to Japan who is now a business executive.
Mr. Macron, whose style of government has been highly centralized and top-down, to the point that he called the election without consulting his own prime minister, said the vote had constituted a call “for the invention of a new French political culture.” He appealed to lawmakers to draw inspiration from “so many of our European neighbors” and show a sense of “conciliation and calm” as they seek to forge a coalition.
For a French president of the Fifth Republic, and particularly this president who has been largely dismissive of Parliament up to now, to say in effect that France should follow the example of Italy or Belgium as it adopts a more parliamentary culture was a measure of the upheaval Mr. Macron has engineered with his mysterious decision to call an election.
The tone of Mr. Macron’s letter, far shorter than most of his speeches and statements, strained for a new humility. But it appeared to contain the seeds of possible drift and confrontation in that his interpretation of the election result is by no means universally, or even widely, shared.
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