French President Emmanuel Macron invited party leaders to last-minute talks on Friday at the Elysée Palace, as the country waits for him to appoint a new prime minister, Politico reports.
All the parties represented in the National Assembly except the far-right National Rally and the far-left France Unbowed received an invitation to attend talks at 2:30 p.m. Friday, according to reports in local media.
The outgoing Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu said on Wednesday that negotiations with opposition parties were going in the right direction and that Macron — who has yet to address the public about the situation — would be in a position to appoint a new prime minister by Friday evening.
France was plunged into a crisis on Monday when Lecornu resigned from his post as prime minister, just 14 hours after unveiling his new government. Lecornu, a Macron loyalist, agreed to stay on as PM to try to find a way out of the deadlock.
The next prime minister will be France’s third in less than a year and will face the arduous task of having to negotiate and pass a budget through a deeply fractured and hostile parliament. Speculation was rife on Friday that Macron would name either someone from his camp or pick a technocratic figure.
There were rumblings in government circles on Friday that the French president might want to pick the loyalist Lecornu again, so that he could carry on the negotiations he has been leading all week.
“He has managed to get [parties] to shift positions on a lot of topics,” said a Lecornu supporter who was granted anonymity to speak candidly.
But reappointing Lecornu would be seen as a provocation by opposition parties who have been calling all week for a change in political direction. The outgoing prime minister also said “his mission is over” on Wednesday and tamped down speculation he would continue.
Gabriel Attal, who leads Macron’s party Renaissance, said in an interview Friday with broadcaster France 2 he would attend the meeting but warned that the French president must start sharing power and “not give the impression that he wants to control everything.”
“For the past year, we’ve appointed prime ministers who are seen as being very close to the president of the Republic, it doesn’t make conversations with opposition parties any easier,” said Attal on Friday.
Lecornu has given no indication as to who the next prime minister could be despite leading talks with opposition parties all week. He has however said a draft budget could be ready in time to be presented to a new government on Monday.
