French President Macron struggles to relaunch talks for new government

Seven weeks after the snap parliamentary election results, the search for the country's next prime minister is becoming more pressing.

Transcript

00:00French President Emmanuel Macron is in the throes of once again trying to form government,

00:06as our correspondent from Paris explains.

00:10France's political headache is far from being resolved.

00:13French President Emmanuel Macron relaunched a series of marathon discussions on Tuesday

00:18with various different parties in the hopes of forming a new government.

00:22On Tuesday, he received the independent and centrist group called Lyot,

00:27and on Wednesday, he will be receiving the conservative right-wing party

00:31that was recently renamed as the Republican Right.

00:34However, the new popular front, the left-wing coalition,

00:37that won the most seats in the snap parliamentary elections

00:40but came short of an absolute majority, has refused to participate in these talks

00:46after Macron rejected the possibility of any left-wing government claiming

00:51that it could endanger institutional stability,

00:55as it would not survive a confidence vote in Parliament.

00:58But with the upcoming Paralympics opening ceremony on Wednesday night

01:02and Macron's visit to Serbia at the end of the week,

01:05well, naming a prime minister is becoming more and more urgent,

01:09and that's because the resigning government under the prime minister, Gabriel Attal,

01:13has now been handling current affairs for more than 40 days,

01:17and it's an unprecedented situation in France since the post-war period.

01:22And the clock is also really ticking,

01:24because the government needs to present the crucial nation's budget plan by October 1st,

01:30and right now, it's looking like France is heading towards a hung parliament

01:34with none of the three main central political blocs

01:38looking like they want to form any sort of coalition.

01:41Sofia Katsenkova, reporting from Paris, for Euronews.