French president accepts prime minister’s resignation but keeps him as head of caretaker government

PARIS — French President Emmanuel Macron accepted the prime minister’s resignation on Tuesday but kept him as head of an interim government as France prepares to host the Paris Olympics at the end of the month.

The president’s office said in a statement that Macron “accepted” the resignation of Prime Minister Gabriel Attal and other ministers on Tuesday. Attal and other members of the government “will take care of current affairs until a new government is appointed,” according to the statement.

There is no firm timetable for when Macron should name a new prime minister, following parliamentary elections this month that left the National Assembly without any dominant political bloc in power for the first time in France’s modern republic.

The interim government led by Attal will focus solely on handling day-to-day affairs.

“In order for this period to end as quickly as possible, it is up to all republican forces to work together” around “projects and actions that serve the French people,” the president’s statement states.

The inaugural session of the National Assembly, the powerful lower house of the French parliament, is scheduled for Thursday.

Normally, members of the government are prohibited from being lawmakers, but Tuesday’s move allows Attal to take his seat as a lawmaker and lead Macron’s group of centrist allies in the National Assembly. He also protects him from a vote of no confidence, because he has already resigned and an interim government cannot be subject to that vote.

France has been on the brink of government paralysis since elections for the National Assembly earlier this month resulted in a split between three main political groups: the leftist New Popular Front coalition, Macron’s centrist allies and Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally.

The new popular front won the most seats but it fell far short of the absolute majority needed to govern alone.

The three main parties of the left-wing coalition, far-left France Insoumise, the Socialists and the Greens, They have urged the president to turn to them to form the new government, but their internal talks have turned into a bitter dispute over who to choose as prime minister.

France Insoumise suspended talks on Monday, accusing the Socialists of sabotaging the candidacies they had put forward to replace Attal.

Socialist Party leader Olivier Faure said Tuesday that the left-wing coalition needs to “think, talk and resume discussions” if it wants to meet “the public’s expectations” and fulfill its promise that it “is ready to govern.”

Faure acknowledged that the long discussions, public disputes and occasional angry verbal exchanges between the leaders of the coalition parties “do not look good.” But “there is so much at stake that it is not unusual for us to talk for a long time and sometimes shout,” Faure said on France Inter radio.

National Rally vice president Sebastien Chenu said the disputes on the left are a sign that the New Popular Front “is not ready to govern.”

He also lashed out at Macron on Tuesday, saying that keeping Attal at the head of the government after two recent elections (for the European Parliament and the National Assembly) was “a denial of democracy.”

Keeping him in charge of “current affairs” is tantamount to “failing” the French people, Chenu said in an interview with broadcasters Europe 1 and CNews.

“We can’t make something new out of something old,” Chenu said. “Attal must pack his bags, he and all his ministers.”

Politicians from the three main groups are also waging a battle for the presidency and key committees of the National Assembly, the influential lower house of the French parliament.

Manuel Bompard, a lawmaker from France Insoumise, said he supported the idea of ​​barring lawmakers from Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally party from holding leadership positions in parliamentary committees such as finance, defense and others.

Even though Le Pen’s party finished third in the election, behind Macron’s group of centrists and the left alliance, Bompard said in an interview with France 2 TV that “there is no reason for us to help them access positions of responsibility”.

Le Pen, a leading figure of the French far-right and a legislator from the National Rally, insisted that “all political forces must participate in the functioning” of parliament.

“The people have spoken. There are 577 legislators who represent them,” Le Pen said in a post on ally of the demonstration) must be represented in the legislative body,” he added.

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Surk reported from Nice, France.

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