France’s divided National Assembly on Thursday retained a centrist member of President Emmanuel Macron’s party as its speaker after chaotic early elections produced a hung legislature.
Speaker Yaël Braun-Pivet, 53, who has served as president of the National Assembly since 2022, retained her position on Thursday after three rounds of voting in the lower house of parliament.
She was backed by Macron’s centrist allies and some conservative lawmakers who were trying to block her left-wing rival from taking the speakership. Braun-Pivert won 220 votes, while Communist Party lawmaker André Chassaigne received 207.
Parliamentary elections earlier this month split three main political blocs: the new Popular Front left coalition, Macron’s centrist allies and the far-right National Rally. None of them won an outright majority.
“We need to get along with each other, to collaborate. We need to be able to find compromises,” Braun-Pivet told lawmakers in a speech after being elected speaker. “You will always find me doing this at your side, in dialogue with you, innovating with you, finding new paths that the National Assembly must take.”
Thursday’s opening of parliament’s lower house came two days after Macron accepted the resignation of Prime Minister Gabriel Attal and other ministers but asked them to run affairs in a caretaker capacity until a new government is appointed as France prepares to host the Paris Olympics at the end of the month.
On Thursday evening, leaders of the New Popular Front again urged Macron to turn to them to form a new government, insisting they had won the most seats in the National Assembly.
However, members of the coalition, which includes the far-left France Unbowed party, the Socialists, the Greens and the Communists, are still bickering over who to choose as their candidate for prime minister.
Chassaigne, a co-candidate of the New Popular Front, criticized the handing of the speaker’s job to Macron’s centrists as “votes stolen by an unnatural alliance.”
This, he added, “gives us more power”.
Chasaigne accused conservative members of the Republican Party of engaging in a “strategy that has resulted in not changing anything” and called the move “disgusting.”
Macron, speaking at a summit of European leaders in Woodstock, England, declined to comment on the political situation in France or say when he planned to appoint a new prime minister.
“I’m not going to answer that question,” he said.
Politicians from the three main camps and smaller parties are locked in a battle for the speakership, with each trying to flex their muscles in the hope of influencing Macron’s decision.
Unions and left-wing activists held protests across the country on Thursday to “put pressure” on Macron to choose a prime minister from the new Popular Front.
There is no clear timeline for when the president must appoint a new prime minister.