Macron rejects left-wing bid to appoint PM before Olympics

French President Emmanuel Macron said he would not name a new government until after the Paris Olympics.

He rejected an attempt by a left-wing coalition to nominate a little-known civil servant, Lucie Castets, as its candidate for prime minister. The New Popular Front won the most seats in this month’s parliamentary elections, but not enough to form a majority.

“Until mid-August, we will not be in a position to change things, because that would create chaos,” President Macron said ahead of Friday’s opening ceremony in central Paris.

Ms. Castets called on him to assume his responsibilities and nominate her.

Leftist politicians accused him of trying to “cancel the results of the legislative elections.”

Macron’s centrist coalition suffered heavy losses in the election, but he asked Prime Minister Gabriel Attal and his ministers to stay on as a caretaker government until replacements were appointed.

The interview, conducted on French television and radio on Tuesday evening, was his first since his election defeat.

Under the French system, the president traditionally appoints a prime minister who is able to command a majority in the National Assembly.

No party now has a majority, but the four-party alliance, the National Front for Freedom, controls at least 182 of the 577 seats, putting it in the strongest position to put forward a candidate, ahead of Macron’s Ensemble and the far-right National Rally.

An hour before Macron appeared on television, the left nominated Ms Castets as a unifying candidate, citing her record of defending public services.

Ms Castets is a 37-year-old economist and civil servant who currently serves as finance and procurement director for the city of Paris, but has no background in party politics. Prime ministers in France are usually members of the National Assembly.

The decision to name her so soon before the president’s television appearance is seen as an attempt to surprise Mr Macron and put political pressure on him.

In an article on X, Ms. Castets said she accepted the nomination “with great humility but also with great conviction.”

But when Macron was asked about the Freedom and Justice Party’s proposal during an interview with the national public broadcaster France 2, he said: “That’s not the issue. The name is not the issue. The issue is: what majority can emerge in the assembly?”

He also said that no parliamentary bloc had succeeded in obtaining a majority in the elections, and that it was not yet certain which bloc would be in a position to appoint a prime minister.

He said he would seek to appoint a prime minister who had “the broadest possible support”.

Macron’s comments sparked angry reactions from some members of the French National Party.

Marine Tondelaer, national secretary of the Ecologists, one of the parties that make up the group, said Macron “must come out of denial”.

“We won, we have a programme, we have a prime minister,” she wrote on Twitter.

“Our voters now expect the social justice and environmental justice measures they have demanded to be implemented.

“The president can’t stop them like that.”

Jean-Luc Mélenchon, leader of the radical leftist La France Insoumise party, accused him of refusing to accept the election result and seeking to impose a dominant republican front.

“This is out of the question. Respect the vote of the French people. He must either accept it or resign!”

The other two members of the coalition, the Communists and the Socialists, were equally angry. Socialist Party leader Olivier Faury said that while neither bloc had an absolute majority, Macron should respect the traditions of the republic and appoint Lucie Castets as prime minister.

In her first public appearance on French radio on Wednesday, Ms Castets was asked about her record since 2023 as finance chief of Paris, a city whose debt is expected to rise to €9bn (£7.5bn) by 2026.

She stressed that “the debts of the city of Paris have nothing to do with the debts of the French state. I am proud to participate in financing long-term projects that will improve people’s lives, the lives of Parisians, especially when it comes to the environment.”

Sebastien Chesnot, a National Rally MP, said the left’s decision to choose her was a joke in bad taste. Her slogan, he added, would be: “I destroyed Paris, now I can do the same to France.”