Socialists in France are calling on President Emmanuel Macron to quickly appoint a new prime minister after the Olympic Games in Paris.
“He cannot block the institutions and the country much longer in this way,” Socialist spokeswoman Chloé Ridel said on France Inter radio on Monday, noting that the budget for the coming year should be finalized soon.
Macron had insisted that he would not appoint a new head of government until after the Olympics, which ended on Sunday. “It is clear that we are not in a situation where we can change things until mid-August, because then we would create chaos,” the president had said.
Ridel said Macron should admit that his policies had been punished by voters and that a new prime minister should come from the ranks of the left-wing alliance that surprisingly won the elections.
Ridel also stressed that the Socialists saw it as their task to work together within this alliance with the Greens, the Communists and the left-wing party La France Insoumise.
On Sud Radio, Prisca Thevenot, spokeswoman for the interim government, spoke out in favor of cooperation between all political forces, from socialists to conservatives, as Macron had already done.
When asked how long the search for a government would take, she warned that a coalition would not be formed in a few days. However, she assured her listeners that the current interim government would not last forever.
The left-wing New Popular Front alliance emerged as a surprise winner in the snap elections for the National Assembly a month ago. Macron’s centrist forces fell to second place, while the right-wing nationalist Rassemblement National led by Marine Le Pen came in third. No camp has an absolute majority in the National Assembly.
