French President Emmanuel Macron is holding emergency talks with party leaders at the Élysée Palace in a last-ditch bid to form a government.
He has excluded both the right-wing National Rally and the hard-left La France Insoumise from the negotiating table today.
The meeting is reportedly aimed at securing a deal between establishment parties to avoid another collapse of government.
For critics, Macron’s decision to bar the country’s two most rebellious political blocs appears to mark a return to elite backroom politics.
According to the Élysée, the goal is to make a “no-confidence truce” that would allow a new prime minister to push through an austerity budget, despite widespread opposition.
France caretaker PM Sébastien Lecornu, who resigned on October 6, could be reappointed by Macron.
But, in bypassing Marine Le Pen’s surging National Rally (RN) and Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s oppostion La France Insoumise (LFI), Macron has effectively shut out millions of French voters from the decision-making process.
Both parties had made clear they would not support a stitched-together centrist coalition.
Following the non-invitation, the President of the RN, Jordan Bardella, distanced his party from the ruling power while reinforcing their stance as an opponent to Macron.
“Emmanuel Macron’s umpteenth ‘last-chance meeting’ is not aimed at defending the interests of the French people: it is aimed at protecting himself from dissolution,” he said today.
“The National Rally is proud not to be invited: we are not for sale to the Macronists,” he added.
Mélenchon made an early morning media appearance the same day to denounce what he called “secret meetings and shady deals”.
Standing before journalists, he renewed his call for early presidential elections, insisting he has “nothing to do” with the current negotiations and reaffirming that demands for Macron’s resignation extend “well beyond” his own party base.
Macron’s move to sideline both RN and LFI, the only two blocs promising to topple any incoming coalition, underscores the President’s increasing reliance on behind-the-scenes manoeuvring in the face of a fractured and volatile National Assembly.
His attempt to bypass France’s growing populists parties may also deepen the crisis.
