(Bloomberg) — French President Emmanuel Macron is seeking to free his government from the stranglehold of National Rally leader Marine Le Pen by piecing together a coalition of moderates that will last until 2027.
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Macron will aim to avoid a new legislative election for more than two years, which is when his term ends, according to an official close to the president. That would defy most expectations for a fresh ballot as soon as July to break France’s political impasse.
The current disarray traces back to June, when Macron called a snap legislative election following a disastrous European ballot. That decision backfired, delivering a National Assembly split into three irreconcilable blocs — a leftist alliance, a smaller center backing Macron, and an expanded nationalist group led by Le Pen.
The previous administration led by Prime Minister Michel Barnier was toppled last week when the National Rally joined the left-wing coalition in passing a no-confidence motion.
The French president will seek to name a new premier within 48 hours, the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said Tuesday evening.
In a bid to form a cabinet that won’t immediately fall to a no-confidence vote, Macron met with most major parties on Tuesday, except for Le Pen’s National Rally and the far-left party of Jean-Luc Melenchon. The president’s office said on Monday that he would work with “all political parties who have indicated that they are willing to compromise” to form a new administration.
Le Pen said she on Wednesday she wasn’t invited to the meeting at the Elysee Palace and doesn’t wish to participate in any kind of Macron government.
“It’s a rodeo,” Le Pen said on France 2 television. “These people aren’t mounting horses to go anywhere — they’re mounting horses to stay in the saddle even if the horse rears up and rolls over.”
This isn’t the first time Macron has sought to bring together a group spanning a range of parties from left-leaning Communists to center-right Republicans. Some comments following Tuesday’s meeting indicated that there still might be room for compromise.
Olivier Faure, the head of the Socialists, said that his group had proposed the idea of an “exchange of good practices” in which the government agreed not to to use a constitutional measure that allows it to pass a bill without a vote and in exchange the opposition wouldn’t support a no-confidence motion.
“That perhaps gives us a landing zone” to search for compromises, Faure said after the meeting.
Le Pen said on Wednesday that such a deal is “appalling” as it would bypass constitutional tools to hold the government to account.
Other participants in the meeting on Tuesday sounded less positive than Faure, highlighting the difficulty Macron faces. The Green party chief Marine Tondelier said the president failed to offer any compromises or concessions.
She said Macron “insisted several times on the fact that they were all committed to no longer putting themselves in the hands of the National Rally, to no longer relying on the National Rally to govern.”
It took Macron nearly two months to pick Barnier to navigate the intractable situation following the summer’s legislative elections. Now, he is under pressure to move faster as the government collapse has left the country with no budget for 2025.
The continuity of institutions relies on emergency legislation that the outgoing government has already prepared to keep the state functioning come January.
What Bloomberg Economics Says…
“A sustained stalemate that leads to a spending freeze could bring as much or more fiscal consolidation as set out in Barnier’s budget.”
-Antonio Barroso and Eleonora Mavroeidi. For full France React, click here
Macron wants to avoid another government collapse, given the political cost of the instability that became apparent last week, according to the official. The president will first try to find a coalition that will work, then he’ll seek to appoint a prime minister.
Any prime minister Macron names, however, will face the same political constraints as Barnier, and might be short-lived.
The fresh push comes ahead of a meeting of Barnier’s outgoing cabinet on Wednesday when they’ll discuss a stopgap spending bill that will allow the government to continue operating without a full 2025 budget come January.
The funding bill will allow the government to continue raising taxes from Jan. 1, according to the finance ministry. It will then allow the government to authorize the minimum level of spending vital to keep the state functioning.
Budget Minister Laurent Saint-Martin said Monday that a full budget for 2025 could take weeks or months to finalize, exposing households to potentially higher tax bills and preventing the state from undertaking new spending pledges.
“French people must realize that censuring the government has a price,” he said.
(Adds Le Pen comments from seventh paragraph)
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