Attention will turn to who could become France’s next prime minister. Convention dictates that Macron will invite a politician from the largest grouping to take on the role. The president’s office said he would reflect on the results before taking “the necessary decisions.”
French Prime Minister Gabriel Attal said Sunday that he would offer to resign on Monday, but he opened the door to heading a caretaker government during the Paris Olympic Games, which begin on July 26. “I will carry out my duties as long as duty demands it, it cannot be otherwise on the eve of such important events,” Attal said in Paris.
At the rally in the Northeast of Paris, Mélenchon demanded Macron appoint a prime minister from his left-wing coalition, known as the New Popular Front. “The president has the power and the duty to call the New Popular Front to govern. It is ready,” said Mélenchon, who leads the radical France Unbowed party.
As his ecstatic supporters chanted “We won!”, Mélenchon said the New Popular Front would seek to implement its manifesto, including revoking Macron’s controversial pensions reforms and introducing big hikes in the minimum wage.
By contrast, the mood at the National Rally election event in the east of the city was grim. Angry Le Pen supporters booed Mélenchon when his speech was shown on TV screens. As the seat projections were announced, one shouted: “What’s that? Is it a joke?”
The National Rally’s party president Jordan Bardella slammed what he called the “unnatural alliance” between Macron and the leftists “to stop by all means National Rally’s most important surge of its history.”
“These agreements now throw France into the arms of Jean-Luc Mélenchon,” Bardella said. “But we have doubled the number of our lawmakers, in the first steps towards a victory tomorrow,” he said, in a reference to the next presidential election in 2027.
Nicolas Camut and Giorgio Leali contributed reporting. This developing story is being updated.