President Emmanuel Macron has accepted Prime Minister Gabriel Attal’s resignation but asked him to remain in his role as caretaker prime minister.
The Elysee Palace said French President Emmanuel Macron had accepted the resignation of Prime Minister Gabriel Attal’s government, which would now act as an interim government.
“We will continue to conduct business as usual until a new government is appointed,” the palace said in a statement Tuesday.
Macron’s centrist Ensemble coalition lost to the New Popular Front (NFP), a broad coalition of left-wing and environmental parties, in snap elections earlier this month.
The vote left the National Assembly without a dominant political force for the first time in the history of the modern French Republic, and no coalition or coalition government has yet been formed.
Until a government is formed, Attal’s caretaker government will run the euro zone’s second-largest economy. It will also be tasked with ensuring the Olympics, which start on July 26, run smoothly.
The interim government cannot introduce new laws or make major amendments to parliament.
“Dealing with the current situation means implementing the measures already decided and managing the emergencies that arise, nothing more, nothing less,” Mathieu Disant, a law professor at Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne University, told Reuters.
“The outgoing government is deprived of all powers. This completely – and quite logically – deprives it of all freedom for political action.”
France has had transitional governments before, but none that lasted more than a few days. There is no limit to how long a transitional government can last. Parliament cannot force a government to step down.
Attal, 34, was appointed French prime minister in January. He rose to fame during the COVID-19 pandemic and served as France’s education minister before becoming prime minister.
His first act as education minister was to ban the Muslim abaya in state schools, a move that made him popular among French conservatives.
