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Gabriel Attal, the French Prime Minister, is leaving the Elysee Palace in Paris, France, on July 16, 2024, after the last Council of Ministers before Emmanuel Macron accepted his resignation.
French Prime Minister resigns: what now?
French President Emmanuel Macron accepted the resignation of his Prime Minister, Gabriel Attal, on Tuesday. Who will take his place? Good question!
France now enters a fraught transition period in which Macron’s outgoing ministers act as a caretaker government while a new coalition is hammered out.
As a reminder, this all resulted from the French snap election, which took place a million news cycles ago earlier this month. Marine Le Pen’s far right National Rally party won more seats than any other single party, but lost to the New Popular Front, a leftwing patchwork in which Jean-Luc Melénchon’s far-left France Unbowed party is the biggest player.
Macron, whose centrist party placed third, called for an agreement “as soon as possible.” But it could take time. None of the blocs has enough seats to form a government alone, and coalition-building among political rivals after elections is uncommon in France. The Europhile Centrist Macron and the Euroskeptic hard-left Melénchon, for example, share little beyond a common disdain for Le Pen.
France’s transitions have never lasted more than 9 days, but as things stand, it would be a gold medal miracle if France has a new government before the Paris Olympics start next Friday.
Jean Luc Melenchon poster at French leftist movement La France Insoumise's (LFI) headquarters in Paris.
What We're Watching: Macron has a left problem, Japan's nuclear option, the election no one cares about
Japan embraces nuclear to wean itself off Russian energy
Russia's war in Ukraine is pushing notoriously slow-moving Japan to make unusually swift policy shifts. In mid-March, Tokyo gave up its decades-long effort to negotiate with Russia over the return of the disputed Kuril Islands. Now, it's ready to ditch Russian energy, which resource-poor Japan needs to keep the lights on. (Tokyo joined Western sanctions against Russia but has not yet banned imports of Russian oil and natural gas.) PM Fumio Kishida announced Thursday that Japan will restart its mothballed nuclear reactors — a big deal because nuclear power is a highly sensitive topic in the only nation to suffer an attack with atomic weapons. Also, a tsunami caused in 2011 the Fukushima disaster, the world’s worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl. That led Japanese public opinion to sour on nuclear, but now a majority support Kishida's plans, which also aim to help the country become carbon-neutral by 2050. Interestingly, the announcement comes just days after a top Japanese investor confirmed a $21 billion natural gas project in Siberia despite uncertainty over Russian sanctions and fears that Russia will cut off Japan first.
Will the left make Macron a lame duck?
President Emmanuel Macron triumphed in last month’s presidential election despite a closer-than-hoped-for race for the Élysée. But he’s still facing tough competition. A ragtag of four left-leaning parties have now joined forces ahead of legislative elections this June in an attempt to block Macron’s legislative agenda. After what appeared to be painstaking negotiations, Jean-Luc Mélenchon – who heads the far-left France Insoumise Party (LFI) and came a close third in the first round of the presidential election – has convinced the Communist and Socialist parties to join a bloc he’s already formed with the Greens. (Though leadership has agreed, the deal still needs to be approved by the Socialist Party's national committee.) The LFI-led bloc wants to thwart Macron’s ability to get anything done in the National Assembly, particularly his pledge to raise the retirement age from 62 to 65. If they succeed in robbing Macron of a parliamentary majority, the president could be forced to appoint a leftist prime minister to steer the legislative agenda. Will the incumbent’s Renaissance rebrand lead to another triumph?