Emmanuel Macron has called on political parties to “rise to the occasion and work together” to build a mainstream coalition with a solid majority after voters in a snap election returned a hung parliament with no obvious route to a government.
The French president, who has not spoken publicly since Sunday’s second round vote, said in a letter to the country that nobody had won the election, in which a left-green alliance come top but fell far short of an absolute majority.
“No political force has a sufficient majority, and the blocs that have emerged are all minorities,” Macron said on Wednesday.
He called on all parties “that identify with republican institutions, rule of law, parliamentarianism, a pro-European stance and French independence to have a sincere, loyal dialogue to build a solid – necessarily plural – majority for the country.”
His wording appeared designed to exclude Marine Le Pen’s National Rally (RN), but also implicitly the radical left France Unbowed (LFI) of Jean-Luc Mélenchon, which is the largest party in the New Popular Front (NFP) alliance that emerged as the surprise election winner.
NFP, which also includes the centre-left socialist, green and communist parties, won 182 of the assembly’s 577 seats and can count on the support of another 10 or so left-leaning MPs, while Macron’s centrist coalition returned 168 MPs. The pre-vote frontrunner, the far-rightRN, was third with 143.
The NFP has since said that, as the largest bloc in the new assembly, it must be allowed to field the next prime minister and implement “our programme, all of our programme, and nothing but our programme”.
Many in Macron’s centrist camp, however, echoed by MPs from the centre-right Les Républicains (LR), have said they would not support an NFP-led government and would back a no-confidence motion against a cabinet featuring members from LFI.
Macron said in his letter, published in Le Parisien, that voters had not wanted the RN to govern. Only “republican forces” represented a majority, he said, and a “clear demand for change and power sharing” required them to build a broad alliance.
“Ideas and programmes before positions and personalities: this alliance must be built around a few major principles for the country,” he said, which takes “into account the concerns [voters] expressed at the time of the elections”.
It would take time for parties to negotiate the compromises that were expected of them, Macron said, so the outgoing government of Gabriel Attal would continue to “exercise its responsibilities and be in charge of day-to-day affairs, as is the republican tradition”.
Macron’s statement came as his centrists appeared divided, with some wanting to link up only with conservatives and others seeking a broader alliance that could include the centre left – entailing the break-up of the NFP – and the centre right.
Aurore Bergé, the minister for gender equality in the outgoing government who was re-elected as an MP for Macron’s Renaissance party on Sunday, said her group wanted to ally with the conservative LR and other members of parliament nearer the centre.
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“There are a little more than 160 of us today … and I am hearing of other deputies [MPs] who would be ready to join us, which means we could become more in numbers than the leftwing bloc,” Bergé said on Wednesday.
The former prime minister Édouard Philippe, a Macron ally, has also called for a negotiated deal between the centrists and the conservatives “to move forward and be able to manage the country’s affairs for at least a year”.
The NFP, however, has said it will suggest a candidate for prime minister by the end of the week.
Le Pen said on Wednesday that ultimate victory for her anti-immigration party had “only been postponed”, while her 28-year-old protege, Jordan Bardella, urged his MPs to be “perfectly beyond reproach” in their posts.
After a campaign in which local media unearthed racist, homophobic and antisemitic social media posts by some RN candidates and exposed the ignorance of others about the party’s policies, Bardella said RN’s MPs must “emphasise the credibility of our project”.
