The end of eight weeks of suspense, negotiations, consultations and speculation. The French presidency has announced the appointment of Michel Banier, former Conservative minister, former Commissioner and Brexit negotiator, as Prime Minister following the second round of the legislative elections on 7 July.
The political sequence that led to the election of the new head of government began with the dissolution of the National Assembly and the calling of elections decided by President Emmanuel Macron, a few days after the European elections that gave victory to the extreme right. A personal decision by the head of state, taken in search of a “clarification” of the political panorama.
After a whirlwind campaign, the legislative elections placed the left-wing coalition of the New Popular Front (NFP) as the main political force in the Assembly (193 seats), ahead of Macron’s centrist coalition (166) and Marine Le Pen’s far-right (142).
The peculiarity of the legislative election result is that none of the three major blocs came close to an absolute majority of 289 deputies (out of a total of 577), a parliamentary fragmentation without precedent in the current French political system, accustomed to large majorities. After announcing a “political truce” during the Olympic Games, Macron began two weeks of consultations with the leaders of the various political parties, as well as with several former presidents and prime ministers.
The Elysée has said it is looking for a compromise candidate who would not provoke the rejection of a majority of deputies and who could overcome a possible parliamentary motion of censure. The announcement by the center and right-wing parties that, in the event of a motion of censure, they would vote against any prime minister from the NFP was the argument used by Macron to refuse to nominate the candidate of the progressive parties, the economist Lucie Castets. , although she represents the coalition with the most seats.
Although Castets proposed to seek parliamentary agreements outside the coalition, also offering a “more collaborative” way of working for the National Assembly, the rest of the political formations said they rejected the NFP program, which included elements such as the cancellation of the NFP pension reform or the increase in the minimum wage.
The president, who is responsible for appointing the prime minister without the constitution imposing deadlines or limits, has repeatedly declared his desire to build a new coalition – different from those that ran in the elections – that would be grouped around his party, with the moderate right, the socialists, the ecologists and the communists. A proposal that would amount to fracturing the New Popular Front to isolate La France Insoumise.
On Thursday morning, the leaders of the main parties of the New Popular Front, alongside Lucie Castets, had published a statement on the social network. They declared that “only two options are now available to the President of the Republic: the first is a government of the New Popular Front, which won the elections; the second is a presidential coalition government, which can only be maintained thanks to a tacit agreement with the extreme right.”
