LEILA FADEL, HOST:
The French president is trying to pull his country out of a deepening political crisis. His third prime minister in only a year threw in the towel on Monday. The past two prime ministers were kicked out in no-confidence votes. No party holds a majority in the French Parliament, and the extremes control the biggest voting blocs. We go now to NPR's Eleanor Beardsley to make sense of this. Eleanor, good morning.
ELEANOR BEARDSLEY, BYLINE: Good morning.
FADEL: So what is the latest?
BEARDSLEY: Well, after Macron's third prime minister in a year, Sebastien Lecornu threw in the towel Monday morning, rather than risk being ousted, President Macron asked him to go back and make a 48-hour last-ditch effort to find some common ground with political leaders to avoid the worst-case scenario, Leila, which is dissolving Parliament and holding new legislative elections. So that's what Lecornu did. And over the last two days, he met with leaders, except for far-right leader Marine Le Pen. She refused to meet because they are - they have the most to gain from this chaos. Anyway, Lecornu went on TV last night after the consultations. Let's listen.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
SEBASTIEN LECORNU: (Speaking French).
BEARDSLEY: He said, "what I can tell you is there's an absolute majority in Parliament for one thing - to avoid calling new legislative elections because there's fear it will lead to the same results or even deeper divisions and bigger blockage than we have now." So Lecornu said that President Macron will name another prime minister by Friday night, his fourth in basically one year.
FADEL: OK. So after the last three have been rejected, why would the fourth succeed?
BEARDSLEY: Well, because this time, Macron might name someone who's not from his center-right camp, but from the mainstream left Socialist Party. They've been clamoring for the position. Or at least the socialists have agreed not to bring down the next prime minister, whoever it is, in a no-confidence vote. You see, Macron's party needs the mainstream right and mainstream left if it wants to cobble together a slim majority in the center. But that socialist support wasn't free. The president had to make a concession, so his party says it is open to re-debating one of its key reforms, which has already been passed into law, which is raising the minimum retirement age from 62 to 64, which has always been deeply unpopular on the left and the far right. I spoke to John Goodman, director of Syracuse University's program in France. He says it was a big sacrifice.
JOHN GOODMAN: The raising of the retirement age is the signature achievement of the Macron presidency inside France. So if he backtracks on that, in order to get a new government in place, then, essentially, French people may ask themselves, what has Macron actually accomplished inside the country?
BEARDSLEY: But that is the price of avoiding worst-case scenarios like dissolving Parliament or even Macron stepping down, which is what the far right is calling for, and even a few Macron allies have alluded to that option.
FADEL: I mean, how did France get here?
BEARDSLEY: Yeah, it's true. Well, many say this crisis is partly his making. In a risky move last year, he dissolved Parliament, thinking he'd increase his majority, but he lost it instead. Now the French Parliament is fractured with the biggest voting blocs on the - you know, not in the center, but the extremes. And the French parliamentary system is not made for coalition building. Also his personality is - grates on people. He's become very unpopular. His presidency is compared to a monarchy, and he didn't make a bond with the French people. And he passed a lot of laws through a clause, not debate and vote in Parliament, and including the law on the retirement reform. And so that has made people frustrated.
FADEL: NPR's Eleanor Beardsley in Paris. Thank you, Eleanor.
BEARDSLEY: You're welcome, Leila.
(SOUNDBITE OF SEAN ANGUS WATSON'S "WALTZ IN SWEATERS") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
