PARIS (Reuters) – Prime Minister Michel Barnier must present his resignation to the President of the Republic on Thursday, the day after the fall of his government which plunged France into a new phase of uncertainty, while the various political forces refine their strategies for the future.

According to several media, Michel Barnier will present his resignation to the head of state on Thursday at 10:00 a.m. Emmanuel Macron will address the French at 8 p.m., the Elysée said.

In the meantime, strategies are being put in place among political parties to try to do well in the next government, which Emmanuel Macron would like to install quickly.

The Minister of the Armed Forces Sébastien Lecornu, whose name is circulating in the press as a potential Prime Minister, calls for “doing everything so that the socialists break away from rebellious France”.

“I call on us to do everything (to) allow the Socialist Party to get out of the path it has taken in recent weeks and months (…) we will have to work with everyone (…) we will have to discuss,” said Sébastien Lecornu on RTL.

On the PS side, its first secretary, Olivier Faure, asks Emmanuel Macron to receive the party leaders who participated in the Republican front.

“I hope that this meeting can take place as soon as possible and ensure that we can discuss the conditions in which we can move forward,” claimed Olivier Faure on France inter.

The leader of the PS, unlike his allies in La France insoumise, is not calling for the resignation of Emmanuel Macron: “There was already the madness of dissolution, we are not going to continue with the madness of dismissal.”

The leader of LFI in the Assembly, Mathilde Panot, reiterated on LCI the group’s call for the resignation of the president to “break the political impasse”.

“The only way to break the political deadlock is for the people to decide at the ballot box with an early presidential election,” she says.

Xavier Bertrand, whose name is also circulating as a potential Prime Minister, puts LFI and the RN back to back and calls for broad agreement.

“You can’t get into the hands of the extremes, there are enough Democrats and Republicans,” believes the president of Les Républicains (LR) of the Hauts-de-France region.

UNCERTAINTY

The fall of Michel Barnier’s government opens a new phase in the political crisis triggered by the dissolution of the National Assembly by Emmanuel Macron on the evening of the European elections of June 9.

The French government was overthrown on Wednesday by a motion of censure, an unprecedented event since 1962 which opens a new period of major political uncertainty, six months after the dissolution of the National Assembly.

The head of state, returning at the end of the day from a trip to Saudi Arabia, wants to appoint a prime minister this time quickly, three sources told Reuters, if possible before Saturday, the day of the cathedral reopening ceremony of Notre-Dame de Paris according to one of the sources.

Faced with a fragmented Assembly, Emmanuel Macron took two months to appoint Michel Barnier to Matignon.

On the markets on Thursday, there was a marked drop but a wait in the face of political uncertainty. Some analysts, however, are worried about a “slowly” crisis in a country still without a budget for next year.

In a press release published on the night of Wednesday to Thursday, the rating agency Moody’s believes that the censorship “aggravates the political impasse in the country”.

(Editor from Paris, with Zhifan Liu and Bertrand Boucey, written by Kate Entringer)

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