By Jurgen Hecker and Joseph Schmid
Agence France-Presse

(AFP) — French President Emmanuel Macron has summoned the major players in the new parliament for talks, an official said Monday, after he and his allies lost their overall majority in the legislative elections. 

The talks with opposition leaders will take place Tuesday and Wednesday at the Elysee Palace, said a presidential official who asked not to be named.

The aim is to “build solutions to serve the French” at a time when there is no “alternative majority” to that of Macron’s ruling alliance, the official added.

Representatives of the parliamentary parties will be received at the Elysee separately and successively, but the official did not specify who had been invited.

This does however suggest that invitations have been extended to the parties of hard-left leader Jean-Luc Melenchon and far-right chief Marine Le Pen, who both made big gains in the polls.

The result of the parliamentary elections was a stunning blow for the president and his reform agenda, leaving his camp facing the prospect of a political deadlock.

While Macron’s Ensemble (Together) coalition remains the largest party after Sunday’s National Assembly elections, it fell dozens of seats short of keeping the absolute majority it has enjoyed for the last five years.

– Resurgent opposition –

The left-leaning Liberation daily called the results a “slap in the face” for Macron, while the conservative Figaro said he was now “faced with an ungovernable France”.

Macron’s Together alliance won 244 seats, well short of the 289 needed for an overall majority, in a low-turnout vote that resulted in an abstention rate of 53.77 percent.

Macron met Monday with his embattled Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne and two top allies, former premier Edouard Philippe and centrist leader Francois Bayrou.

The election saw the new left-wing alliance NUPES become the main opposition force along with its allies on 137 seats, according to interior ministry figures.

But it appears unlikely the coalition of Socialists, Communists, Greens and the hard-left France Unbowed will be able to retain common cause in the legislature.

Jean-Luc Melenchon, the France Unbowed chief who orchestrated the alliance, called its results “fairly disappointing” and proposed Monday to make NUPES a permanent left-wing bloc.

He said it would not be a full-on merger but simply an effective “alternative” force in parliament, though the offer was immediately rejected by the three other NUPES parties.

– Premier vulnerable? –

Meanwhile the far-right under Marine Le Pen posted the best legislative performance in its history, becoming the strongest single opposition party with 89 seats, up from eight in the outgoing chamber.

A confident Le Pen said her party would demand to chair the National Assembly’s powerful finance commission, as is tradition for the biggest opposition party.

“The country is not ungovernable, but it’s not going to be governed the way Emmanuel Macron wanted,” Le Pen told reporters Monday.

Melenchon said he would bring a motion of no confidence against Prime Minister Borne in early July, when she is to lay out her policy priorities for the next five years.

Borne, who was elected to parliament in her first-ever political race, could now be vulnerable as Macron faces a new cabinet shake-up after several of his top allies lost their seats.

His health and environment ministers were beaten and by tradition will have to resign, as did the parliament speaker and the head of Macron’s parliament group.

“For now, the prime minister remains the prime minister,” government spokeswoman Olivia Gregoire defiantly told France Inter radio Monday. 

“My fear is that the country is paralysed.”

The outcome tarnished Macron’s April presidential election victory when he defeated Le Pen, becoming the first French president to win a second term in over two decades.

– ‘A lot of imagination’ –

The options available to Macron range from seeking to form a new coalition alliance, passing legislation based on ad hoc agreements, or even calling new elections.

One option would be an alliance with the Republicans, the traditional party of the French right, which has 61 MPs. 

But LR president Christian Jacob insisted his party intended to “stay in opposition”.

Macron had hoped to mark his second term with an ambitious programme of tax cuts, welfare reform and raising the retirement age. All that is now in question.

In a rare bit of good news for the president, Europe Minister Clement Beaune and Public Service Minister Stanislas Guerini — both young pillars of his party — won tight battles for their seats.

© Agence France-Presse