French President Emmanuel Macron has said that he will not appoint a new government until after the Olympic Games in Paris.
This came after the New Popular Front (NFP), a left-wing coalition that has become the largest faction in the French parliament following recent elections, put forward a little-known civil servant, Lucie Castets, as its candidate for prime minister.
Responding to the proposal, Macron said a new appointment before mid-August would “create chaos”.
Left-wing politicians accuse him of trying to “undo the results of the parliamentary elections”.
The Olympic Games begin on Friday with an opening ceremony in central Paris and conclude on August 11.
Mr. Macron accepted the resignation from Prime Minister Gabriel Attal after their centrist party’s heavy losses in parliamentary elections that concluded earlier this month.
However, Mr Attal and his ministers agreed to stay on in the form of an interim government until replacements were appointed.
In the French system, the president traditionally appoints a prime minister who commands a majority in the National Assembly.
Currently, no party has a majority, but the NFP does have a majority in 182 of the 577 seats. This makes the party the strongest in nominating a candidate.
On Tuesday, after weeks of negotiations and just an hour before Macron was due to give a television interview, the group nominated Ms Castets, citing her record of defending public services.
Ms Castets is a 37-year-old economist and civil servant who currently works as director of finance and purchasing for the city of Paris. She has no background in party politics.
This choice is unusual because the prime minister is usually a sitting member of the National Assembly.
Mrs Castets wrote in X that she accepted the nomination “with great humility, but also with great conviction”.
But when asked about the NFP’s proposal during an interview with national public broadcaster France 2, Macron said: “This is not the problem. The name is not the problem. The problem is: what majority can come out of the assembly?
“Of course we have to concentrate on the Games until mid-August.
“We can’t change anything until mid-August, because that would cause chaos.”
He also said that no faction had emerged with a majority in the elections and that it was not yet certain which faction would be able to appoint a prime minister.
He said he would aim to appoint a prime minister with the “broadest possible support”.
Macron’s comments sparked angry reactions from some NFP members.
Marine Tondelier, national secretary of The Ecologists, one of the group’s parties, said Macron “must come out of his denial phase”.
“We won, we have a program, we have a prime minister,” she wrote on X.
“Our voters now expect the social and environmental justice measures they demanded to be put into practice.
“The president cannot block them this way.”
Manuel Bompard, national coordinator of France Unbowed, accused him of trying to “cancel the results of the parliamentary elections”.
“This is an unbearable denial of democracy,” he said. “In France, there is no presidential veto when the people express their will.”
