On July 7, French voters went to the polls, but the country still has no new government in place. President Emmanuel Macron will point to a candidate for prime minister who he believes has the opportunity to get a majority behind him in the National Assembly. Despite a long series of meetings and consultations, it still looks deadlocked. Why is this taking so long? After the defeat in the EU parliamentary elections in June, Macron called new elections to “clarify” the political situation in the country. However, the result was not very clarifying. No party group has a majority in the National Assembly. As the French political system does not have a particular tradition of broad coalition governments, there is also no established formula for how the government consultations should take place. Emmanuel Macron has received a large number of people at the presidential palace in the last two weeks, without having decided on a candidate. Who is Macron talking to to find this out? In the first instance, it was party leaders and representatives of the electoral alliances who showed up at Macron’s. He then invited ex-presidents, high-ranking bureaucrats and former ministers. RIGHT: Annie Genevard, Bruno Retailleau and Laurent Wauquiez of the Les Républicains party after a meeting with Macron last week. Photo: AFP The list was so long that a former adviser to former president François Hollande predicted that the time had come to go really wide: He believed that it was now up to both former winners of the Tour de France and France’s answer to Oscar, Cæsar -prize, would soon have the chance to stop by the president and air ideas about who should become prime minister. Can France get a cycling pro as prime minister? It was probably a joke. It was a broad left-wing coalition that won the most seats in the National Assembly. So why doesn’t President Macron point to this coalition’s candidate? It is crucial to find out which candidate has the opportunity to form a government that will not be immediately overthrown. President Macron’s assessment, after the first talks with party leaders, is that such a left-wing government will not survive long enough to begin work. Isn’t that right, then? It may well happen. The critics still believe that Macron exceeds his mandate here. They claim that it is not up to Macron to pre-empt governments in this way. THE LEFT ALLIANCE: They got the most representatives in the National Assembly. But will they be allowed to form a government? Photo: AFP Who are the favorites to get the job as prime minister? When the week began, it was Socialist Party defector Bernard Cazeneuve who was most frequently mentioned. Then the not very well-known and less politically significant Thierry Beaudet appeared on the list. After that, the hypothesis of such a “technocratic” variant was dropped, apparently anyway. FAVORITES: Xavier Bertrand and Bernard Cazeneuve are among this week’s favorites to become Prime Minister of France. Photo: AFP Now it was a ring fox from the right, Xavier Bertrand, who was the favourite. But everyone is dependent on a large enough number of representatives not voting for motions of no confidence. The Left Alliance currently seems to want to block all alternatives that do not spring from their relatively successful electoral alliance. The far right has stated that they prefer a more technocratic one, as long as there is no candidate who has obvious prejudices against Le Pen’s party. So far, no candidate has satisfied them. Are there any parties profiting from this chaos? It’s not very good to say. One hypothesis is that it will be good for the far-right party Nasjonal Samling if the future government is a broad coalition government in which Le Pen’s party does not participate. In this way, they can sit on the outside and point out how the elite are messing up, and in the long run appear as a popular alternative. Italian President Giorgia Meloni’s path to power followed roughly such a recipe. ALLO ALLO: Emmanuel Macron is calling right and left. Photo: AP Is there a deadline here? French voters are not used to waiting so long for a government. According to the French constitution, this year’s budget must be adopted by the first Tuesday in October, so it would not be a bad idea to have a government in place before then. Published 04/09/2024, at 19.27
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When will France get a new government? – news Urix – Foreign news and documentaries
