France seeks a new government

Almost eight weeks after an inconclusive legislative vote, France is still struggling to put together a new government. In other European countries, used to stitching together painstaking coalition deals between rivalrous political parties, this would be unremarkable. In 2017-18 it took Germany nearly six months, and even longer in the Netherlands earlier this year. But for France, which cherishes the stability that its Fifth Republic has brought since it was established in 1958, this hiatus is unprecedented. It reflects a failure to treat compromise as anything other than capitulation, and will render the new prime minister’s task unusually challenging.

France has been run by a caretaker government since July 16th, when the outgoing prime minister, Gabriel Attal, formally resigned, staying on to oversee the hugely successful Paris Olympic games. As The Economist went to press on August 29th, President Emmanuel Macron had yet to name a new prime minister, a decision that the constitution puts in his hands. No single parliamentary bloc—including the left-wing New Popular Front (nfp), Mr Macron’s centrists and Marine Le Pen’s hard right—won anything close to a majority in the 577-seat National Assembly. In July, therefore, Mr Macron called on political parties to try to forge a compromise that might lead to a cross-party government.

Nothing of the sort has taken place. Instead the nfp has dug in its heels. With 193 seats, it is the biggest bloc in the lower house, though still 96 seats short of a majority. An alliance that reaches from Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s radical Unsubmissive France (lfi) to moderate pro-European Socialists, it did manage to agree on a joint candidate for prime minister: Lucie Castets, a senior civil servant at the Paris town hall. All summer the nfp has insisted that it won the elections, that it can govern alone, and that it has no intention of compromising on its tax-and-spend manifesto pledges. This was the message it conveyed to Mr Macron, who met its leaders, along with Ms Castets, on August 23rd.

The president could have decided to offer Ms Castets the job anyway, knowing that she would probably be swiftly toppled by a vote of no confidence in parliament. That would at least have had the merit of demonstrating the nfp’s relative weakness, and the lack of parliamentary support for its programme. Instead, Mr Macron decided to take that putative defeat as given. Three days after meeting its leaders he ruled out naming an nfp government. His aides argue that he is acting according to his constitutional duty to ensure “institutional stability”. The nfp instantly accused Mr Macron of undermining democracy and abusing his presidential powers. The lfi is organising a protest march on September 7th. Mr Mélenchon has called for the president to be impeached.

Mr Macron has now embarked on fresh talks, in search of a figure who could command enough respect. Among new leaders being summoned to the Elysée palace are Carole Delga, the moderate Socialist leader of the Occitanie region in the south of France, and David Lisnard, the centre-right mayor of Cannes. Speculation in Paris swirls around other senior figures too. Those on the left include Bernard Cazeneuve (a former Socialist prime minister), Didier Migaud (a former Socialist mp, now head of a public-transparency watchdog) and Pierre Moscovici (a former Socialist finance minister, now head of the national audit body). Others hail from the right, including Michel Barnier (a former European commissioner), Xavier Bertrand (head of the Hauts-de-France region) and Christine Lagarde (head of the European Central Bank). The French seem simply baffled. A poll in August suggested that the most popular choice for a new prime minister was the caretaker incumbent, Mr Attal.

The nomination of a new prime minister, when it happens, is likely to mark the beginning of a new chapter of political upheaval, not the end of it. The left now feels that Mr Macron has stolen its election victory; Mr Mélenchon is taking his anger to the streets. The right is chronically divided. The centre is weakened and dismayed by the whole affair, brought on by Mr Macron’s unexpected decision to call a snap election. And the leader most likely to benefit from all this discord in the longer run is Ms Le Pen. It will take unusually deft handling by a new French prime minister to bring about anything like the sort of stability and clarity that Mr Macron thought he would achieve by dissolving parliament in the first place. 

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