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France, the appointment of Lucie Castetes as Prime Minister: can Emmanuel Macron refuse the proposal?
A last-minute proposal brushed aside. In a TV show, Emmanuel Macron implicitly refused to appoint Lucie Castets to Matignon, as the NFP had asked him to do less than an hour earlier. “It is false to say that the New Popular Front would have a majority, whatever it may be,” President Macron observed, without mentioning the surname of the previously unknown 37-year-old senior civil servant. “The question is not a name,” he declared.
Macron “does not violate” the Constitution
Does the President of the Republic have the right not to call Lucie Castets to form a government? The appointment of the Prime Minister is specified in the Constitution: “The President of the Republic appoints and designates the Prime Minister” it says. He is not obliged to appoint a particular person, and there is no imposed timetable either.
The head of state is therefore free to do what he wants, observe public law specialists. “Emmanuel Macron has not disregarded the Constitution and has not made a problematic interpretation of it” according to the analysis by Bertrand-Léo Combrade.
“No institutional coup d’état”
The professor of public law excludes that Emanuel Macron has not abused his constitutional right and that it is within his prerogatives that the law authorized him, as President of the Republic elected by the people. “It is quite excessive to speak of a political coup d’état.” From the point of view of his competence, he is not violating anything, abounds the constitutionalist Thibaud Mulier.
The appointment of the Prime Minister is one of the few functions that is completely autonomous and does not require the countersignature and approval of the government. If there is anything that can be criticized.
“It is the Constitution itself, but not the President of the Republic,” believes Bertrand-Léo Combrade. “We can see that Article 8 leaves so much room for maneuver that it can impose a presidentialist reading on a Constitution that is that of a parliamentary regime.”
“A situation that sticks
to republican principles”
When we look at the precedents of cohabitation, where the president who had lost his majority in the National Assembly appointed a Prime Minister who was proposed by the political party that came out on top in the elections.
It could be considered that Emmanuel Macron should have made known his wish to appoint a Prime Minister designated by the coalition that came out on top, namely the NFP, Bertrand-Léo Combrade explains. “We have a political field dominated by the President of the Republic, whereas there should be a spotlight on the government-National Assembly duo.”
Left-wing alliance wants prime minister as soon as possible
The New Popular Front continues to put pressure on the Elysée in the media. “The NFP cannot invoke any article of the Constitution to its advantage. There are no provisions that it could enforce against the President of the Republic,” according to Bertrand-Léo Combrade. In this unprecedented political situation, the head of state has not yet said his last word, on the other hand, “the resigning Attal government can no longer make decisions, there would be legal action.” If the head of state finally decides to entrust the task of forming a government to a member of the alliance in the making between the presidential camp and the right, the NFP could counterattack and try to overthrow it via a motion of censure, with the necessary support of the National Rally.
For the time being, the head of state has decided to stall by means of an “Olympic truce” that he has been calling for several days, until mid-August of course. After that, he will be obliged to appoint a Prime Minister. Faced with this decision, the leaders of the NFP are indignant on the part of the president.
“Emmanuel Macron erases the results of the legislative elections. It is an unbearable denial of democracy,” denounced Manuel Bompard, coordinator of La France insoumise (LFI). “Denial is the worst policy. The one that leads to the worst policy,” continued Olivier Faure, leader of the Socialist Party (PS), on the same social network. LFI MP Emmanuel Fernandes even spoke of an institutional coup d’état, on the part of Emmanuel Macron who abuses his constitutional right, for her part, Marine Tondelier, leader of the Ecologists-EELV, compared the head of state to her son. “He looks like my 5-year-old son when he loses at Monopoly Junior,” He challenges the rules, invents new ones, plays on words and refuses to recognize that he is losing. Everything you teach a child not to do.
The left-wing alliance, in the aftermath of the legislative elections, has the President of the Republic to appoint a personality from its ranks, after its narrow victory at the polls. But Emanuel Macron justifies his position by putting forward the fact that the Prime Minister must above all avoid being overthrown by the deputies, via a motion of censure.
“The question is what majority can emerge in the Assembly so that a French government can pass reforms, pass a budget and move the country forward,” he declared.
From Marseille,
Samir Sabek