With a prime minister, Gabriel Attal, who is now officially out of power, but with no one to take his place, France is going through a phase of unprecedented political acrobatics. The president of the country Emmanuel Macron accepted, from a formal point of view, the resignation of Atal, who after the results of the recent parliamentary elections was no longer possible to remain in his position. He will however remain until his replacement arrives, handling “current affairs”. In other words, there will be a temporary situation, which cannot be ruled out for a few weeks, i.e. until the end of the Paris Olympic Games, which begin in 10 days

As far as his replacement is concerned, which under normal circumstances could come from within a larger party, i.e. the left-wing New People’s Front, the landscape remains cloudy today, due to the inability of left-wing parties to arrive at a mutually acceptable face. A weakness that is gradually taking on the dimensions of a rupture, with the left parties arguing publicly about the impasse and blaming each other. Since last night, however, it has become clear that the Socialist party, the Environmentalists and the Communist party tend to agree on the face of the French economics professor Lawrence Tubianawho has no party affiliation but largely drafted the 2015 Paris agreement to tackle climate change, and whose candidacy was roundly rejected as “not serious” by Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s Insubordinate France, believing that only a political figure from its ranks could implement to the letter the pre-election program of the Popular Front, which has a relative but not an absolute majority.

As for the resignation of his government Gabriel Atal, the reason why it was formally accepted today is twofold: On the one hand, it is ensured that since it is a government under steam, no motion of censure can be submitted against it while it remains in operation, while on the other hand, its 17 ministers who have been elected and MPs, due to the temporary nature of the government, are not obliged to give up their parliamentary seat and will therefore be able to take part the day after tomorrow, Thursday, in the crucial vote that will be held for the election of the new president of the French National Assembly. According to many French analysts, this is an extremely expansive interpretation of the French Constitution, which expressly provides that a member of parliament who becomes a minister must surrender his parliamentary seat.

In the meantime, President Macron called on the leaders of his faction to work towards the creation of a broad cross-party cooperation that would allow France to have a self-sustaining government. Some of these officials have publicly said they would like Macron’s faction to work with France’s traditional right-wing party, the Republicans, while others lean toward working with the left. The upcoming election of the president of the National Assembly could possibly show where things are going. And this is because if there is no cooperation between the Macron faction and the Republicans, then the New People’s Front of the left could win the presidency of the body. It is already assumed that his candidate will be the head of the ecologists’ parliamentary group, Cyrille Satlen. In the opposite case, no, since the sum of the deputies of the two factions is greater than the sum of the deputies of the parties of the left.