After the electoral defeat, French President Macron continues to rely on the fairly new Prime Minister Borne. By the end of next week, she is to explore the possibilities of forming a government.
French President Emmanuel Macron is sticking with Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne after losing his absolute majority in the parliamentary elections.
The Élysée Palace in Paris announced that Macron had expressed his confidence in the head of government, who had only been in office for a few weeks. At the same time, he instructed the 61-year-old to explore the possibilities of cooperation with the parliamentary groups in the National Assembly who are in line with him. The new government should be in place at the beginning of July.
The talks with the other parties should take place in the next few days, it said. Borne will then submit proposals for a timetable for the coming months and years. It should also be about how an effective government must be composed. Macron was re-elected as head of state in April. In the subsequent parliamentary election, however, his middle camp missed an absolute majority. That is why he is dependent on other support from Parliament.
First woman in three decades
Macron only appointed the former Labor Minister in mid-May as the new prime minister, the first woman in three decades. Borne was long close to the Socialists before joining the Macron camp in 2017. After the defeat in the parliamentary elections, there was speculation about their replacement. In any case, two ministers will be missing in the new cabinet because they did not make it into parliament: Environment Minister Amélie de Montchalin and Health Minister Brigitte Bourguignon.
It is still unclear whether a real coalition will be formed for the future government or whether there will be more topic-related cooperation. The largest opposition groups – Marine Le Pen’s right-wing national Rassemblement National and the Left Party – show little willingness to help Macron out of his misery. A rapprochement seems conceivable with the bourgeois-conservative Républicains, formerly themselves the governing party.
