By Elizabeth Pineau
PARIS (Reuters) -Emmanuel Macron does not plan to name a prime minister from the left later on Friday, disappointed leftist party chiefs said after crunch talks with the French president, suggesting his future government will be as fragile as those that preceded it.
Macron summoned mainstream party chiefs to the Elysee on Friday, hoping to win their support for a new prime minister – his sixth in under two years – ahead of a self-imposed deadline later in the evening.
France is in the midst of a spiralling political crisis as a series of minority governments struggle to push belt-tightening budgets through a deeply divided parliament. To resolve the crisis, some of Macron’s political foes have said he should either call fresh legislative elections or resign, measures he has so far sought to avoid.
After leaving Friday’s meeting, leftist party chiefs said Macron had said he did not plan to name a leftist prime minister, a position they believe is their right after Macron’s previous centrist picks were toppled by lawmakers unwilling to stomach the government’s proposed budget cuts.
Macron offered to delay the application of his contentious pension reform until after the 2027 presidential election, but the leftist leaders said that wasn’t enough.
“We’re not looking for a dissolution of parliament, but we’re not scared of it either,” Socialist party chief Olivier Faure told reporters after the meeting, which did not include the far-right National Rally (RN) and hard-left France Unbowed (LFI) – two of the largest political parties in the National Assembly.
Centrist and centre-right party chiefs did not comment to reporters after leaving the Elysee.
Ahead of the meeting, which came on the same day that the country’s central bank chief warned that the lingering political turmoil was sapping growth, the president’s office said the gathering needed to be a “moment of collective responsibility.”
(Reporting by Dominique Vidalon and Benjamin MalletWriting by Richard LoughEditing by Alison Williams, Frances Kerry and Toby Chopra)
