French Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne, weakened after her government lost a majority in Sunday’s general election, has offered to resign but President Emmanuel Macron has turned it down, the Elysee Palace said on Tuesday. Macron wants the Borne government to remain “on duty” while the unprecedented political situation in France is settled, where for the first time in six decades no party will have a clear majority in the National Assembly. According to Agence France Presse, Borne wants to meet the government this afternoon.
The President of the Republic will take the pulse of the opposition this Tuesday and Wednesday. He will receive the leaders of the main parties at the Elysée. This is a first contact to explore possible areas of understanding. Macron, who ruled with a comfortable majority for his first five years, still has the first group in parliament but needs 44 more MPs to reach the threshold of an absolute majority, 289 seats. He has two options: strive for a permanent coalition agreement or negotiate individual agreements with various political forces. The other is to dissolve the assembly and call new elections.
More information
An alliance with Los Republicanos (LR), the historic party of the moderate right, which has 64 seats, would allow him to govern with ease. But after speaking with Macron on Tuesday, that party’s leader, Christian Jacob, reiterated his refusal to reach a government agreement with the Macronists, despite having negotiated certain laws. “We will never block the institutions,” he told the press, “but we will not get caught up in the logic of pacts and coalitions or anything like that.” Before the steps of the Elysée, the socialist Olivier Faure declared: “Without a majority [Macron] is obliged to re-parliamentize political life. And it’s pretty healthy in a country like ours to have to be accountable and negotiate and look for agreements that allow us to move in the right direction.”
Borne, a veteran center-left technocrat with little experience of parliamentary life or party politics, was appointed in May. After the legislature, it has become the weak link in the French government. Opposition politicians are calling for his resignation, but doubts about his continuity are also being voiced within the ranks of Ensemble (Together) – the macronist electoral coalition. On Sunday, she appeared in a constituency in Normandy, where she won with 52.3% of the vote, a slim margin that did not strengthen her in Paris. In France, it is customary for the prime minister to resign after general elections so that the president can reappoint him and put him in charge of forming a new government.
Follow all international information on Facebook and Twitteror in our weekly newsletter.
Subscribe to EL PAÍS to follow all the news and read without limits.
Subscribe to