By Elizabeth Pineau and Ingrid Melander
PARIS (Reuters) – French President Emmanuel Macron is expected to accept the resignation of Prime Minister Gabriel Attal and his government by the end of the day, two government sources said, following an inconclusive snap election, but they would stay on in a caretaker capacity until a new cabinet is appointed.
This will allow Attal and other members of the government, including Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin, to sit in parliament and take part in the election of the assembly’s president when it first convenes on Thursday.
The government will be able to take charge of emergency situations and run current affairs in the euro zone’s second-largest economy, but cannot submit new laws to parliament – not even the annual budget – or make any major changes, experts say.
Running current affairs will include making sure that the Olympics, that start on July 26, run smoothly.
There have been caretaker governments before in France, but none has ever stayed on for more than a few days. There is no set limit to how long an acting government can stay on. Parliament cannot force it to quit.
Left-wing parties are fighting bitterly over who to put forward as prime minister, prompting Communist party leader Fabien Roussel to warn that they are risking a “shipwreck.”
The New Popular Front (NFP), an alliance ranging from socialists and Greens to the communist party and the hard-left France Unbowed, was hastily assembled before the June 30 and July 7 snap election and unexpectedly topped the vote.
But it did not win an absolute majority, and years of tensions between the parties have resurfaced over who could run a possible left-wing government.
Complicating matters, Macron has called on mainstream parties to forge an alliance to form a government, an option that would include some of the NFP but exclude France Unbowed.
“If we don’t manage to find a solution in the hours, the days, to come, it would be a shipwreck,” Roussel told BFM TV, describing the state of talks as “deplorable.”
(Reporting by Elizabeth Pineau and Blandine Henault; Writing by Ingrid Melander, Editing by Timothy Heritage, Richard Lough)
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