French president Emmanuel Macron was on Thursday searching for his sixth prime minister in under two years, hoping his next pick can steer a budget through a legislature riven by crisis.
Mr Macron’s office said on Wednesday he would appoint a new prime minister within 48 hours, after outgoing prime minister Sébastien Lecornu held two days of talks to seek a way out of France’s worst political crisis in decades.
The political paralysis has made it deeply challenging to pass a belt-tightening budget, demanded by investors increasingly worried by France’s yawning deficit.
“The question that is posed today is whether there are enough people who are responsible,” government spokesperson Aurore Bergé told RTL radio. “I think this is the last chance.”
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Mr Lecornu tendered his and his government’s resignation on Monday, hours after announcing the cabinet line-up, making it the shortest-lived administration in modern France.
He said in a television interview on Wednesday that, during talks that Mr Macron asked him to hold with party leaders after he resigned, he had learned that a majority of lawmakers opposed holding a snap parliamentary election and there was a path, even if a tough one, to passing a budget by year-end.
Another key issue is Mr Macron’s 2023 pension overhaul, which gradually raises the retirement age from 62 to 64. Members of the left have called for the law to be repealed or suspended.
For now, rival parties have largely stuck to their views on how to proceed, and there has been no indication of who could be the next prime minister.
The Socialists said Mr Macron should appoint a prime minister from the left. The Republicains, who are part of the outgoing government, said they would not support a leftist premier.
Meanwhile, Manuel Bompard, of the hard-left France Unbowed (LFI), repeated his calls for Mr Macron to resign. Jordan Bardella, president of the far-right National Rally (RN), reiterated his party’s demand for a new parliamentary election.
On the streets of Paris, people said they hoped for more stability.
“Well, having a prime minister who stays in office would be a good start, I think,” said Mathilde Marcel (40). “And then, obviously, things need to move forward and reforms need to be implemented.”
The crisis has caused jitters on financial markets but bonds held on to gains from the day before on optimism that France can avoid a snap parliamentary election and agree on a budget.
Mr Macron has this week faced multiple calls to hold a snap parliamentary elections or resign from far-right and hard-left politicians, but also from some in the political mainstream.
Mr Macron’s former prime minister Édouard Philippe urged the president to bring forward the presidential contest, which is scheduled for 2027.
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France needed “to emerge in an orderly and dignified manner from a political crisis that is harming the country”, Mr Philippe, himself a contender for the presidency, told RTL this week. “Another 18 months of this is far too long.”
Mr Macron has become increasingly isolated since his shock decision to dissolve parliament last year to try to stem the rise of Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally.
But his gambit backfired, resulting in a hung parliament, an emboldened opposition and several prime ministers who could not survive longer than a few months.
Mr Macron has previously ruled out cutting his final term short and bringing forward the presidential vote.
But Mr Philippe, a moderate conservative who served as premier during Mr Macron’s first term, warned that there was a “terrible risk” that new parliamentary elections would still result in a hung assembly and prolong the crisis.
Mr Philippe is widely seen as one of the leading candidates to take on the mantle of the president’s centrist bloc, although he is polling far behind Ms Le Pen or Mr Bardella. – Reuters
