President Macron is embarking on a new—and perhaps final—round of consultations, aiming to appoint the next prime minister. With almost two months passed since the 2nd round of the legislative elections and deadlock dragging on, Marine Le Pen —president of the Rassemblement National (RN) deputies—is calling for an extraordinary parliamentary session.
The series of consultations launched by the President at the end of August with the leaders of the main parties represented in Parliament has so far failed to name the future prime minister.
Emmanuel Macron has therefore scheduled further meetings on Monday, September 2nd, to help him make his decision, which is expected to be imminent. He is due to receive two former presidents of the Republic at the Élysée Palace, Nicolas Sarkozy for the Right and François Hollande for the Left.
Nicolas Sarkozy is pushing his former party, Les Républicains (LR), for an alliance with Emmanuel Macron. “The right must assume the responsibility of governing,” he explained in an interview with Le Figaro. This prospect is rejected for the time being by Laurent Wauquiez, former president of France’s 2nd largest region, Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes—heir to Nicolas Sarkozy and now head of the centre-right MPs in the National Assembly.
Alongside Sarkozy and Hollande, two possible ‘prime-minister-to-be’ figures are expected: Xavier Bertrand, for the centre-right, and Bernard Cazeneuve, for the Left. Cazeneuve is a socialist who once belonged to the same leftist government as Macron, and briefly held the post of prime minister under François Hollande.
The New Popular Front (NFP) coalition already announced that it would reject the appointment of Bernard Cazeneuve, as it would reject any candidate other than its own choice, Parisian civil servant Lucie Castets. La France Insoumise MP Mathilde Panot announced:
We want what the French people voted for loud and clear, which is a break with the policy being pursued by Emmanuel Macron, to happen. And I believe that Mr Cazeneuve is the one who will continue a Macronist policy.
In view of the continuing deadlock, Marine Le Pen has called for an extraordinary session of the National Assembly. The deputies elected at the beginning of July are not normally required to meet until October 1st, which explains the request made by the leader of the RN deputies at her meeting with the President on August 26th. In a post on X on the morning of September 2nd, she justified her request by saying that the elected MPs needed to get down to work in order to honour their mandate:
Bolstered by the votes of more than 11 million French men and women, the group I chair believes that it is intolerable that MPs should not be meeting in extraordinary session to fulfil, without further delay, all the responsibilities entrusted to us by our fellow citizens.
The purpose of this extraordinary session would also be to monitor the actions of the resigning government—which has de facto been in office and out of control since mid-July. It is concerned that during this period it could implement a policy deemed “toxic and dangerous for the French people.”
