Macron talks with rivals after poll loss
PARIS: French President Emmanuel Macron was to host far-right leader Marine Le Pen and other political party chiefs in a bid to break the impasse created by the failure of his coalition to win a majority in parliamentary elections.
The meetings, which will also include talks with right-wing, Socialist and Communist party chiefs, are the first attempts by Mr Macron to extract himself from a situation that risks wrecking his second-term reform plans.
Mr Macron was due to start yesterday’s flurry of discussions by talking with Christian Jacob, the head of the traditional right-wing the Republicans (LR), a party on the decline in recent months but which now may be courted by the president to give him a majority.
Socialist Party leader Olivier Faure and Communist Party boss Fabien Roussel — members of the NUPES leftwing alliance — was also scheduled to meet Mr Macron yesterday, although the hard-left leader Jean-Luc Melenchon was not scheduled to do so.
And in a rare encounter, Mr
Macron was scheduled to host Marine Le
Pen, his rival in presidential elections and leader of the far-right National Rally (RN), at 5.30pm Paris time.
The aim is to “build solutions to serve the French” at a time when there is no “alternative majority” to that of Mr Macron’s ruling alliance, said a presidential official who asked not to be named.
The result of the parliamentary elections was a stunning blow for the president and his reform agenda, leaving his camp facing the prospect of a political deadlock.
While Mr Macron’s Ensemble (“Together”) coalition remains the largest party after Sunday’s National Assembly elections, it fell dozens of seats short of keeping the absolute majority it has enjoyed for the last five years.
Mr Melenchon and Ms Le Pen made big gains, leaving them as major players in the new parliament.
The left-leaning Liberation daily called the results a “slap in the face” for Mr Macron, while the conservative Figaro said he was now “faced with an ungovernable France”.
Mr Macron’s alliance won 244 seats, well short of the 289 needed for an overall majority, in a low-turnout vote that resulted in an abstention rate of 53.77%.
The election saw NUPES become the main opposition force along with its allies on 137 seats.