The French prime minister, Élisabeth Borne, presents her resignation and Macron rejects it | International

French Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne, weakened after her government lost the majority in Sunday’s legislative elections, has tendered her resignation, but President Emmanuel Macron has rejected it, the Elysee Palace announced on Tuesday. Macron wants the Borne government to continue “on task” while the unprecedented political situation in France is clarified, where for the first time in six decades no party will have a clear majority in the National Assembly. Borne plans to meet the Government this afternoon, reports Agence France Presse.

The President of the Republic will take this Tuesday and Wednesday the pulse of the opposition. He will receive the leaders of the main parties at the Elysee. This is a first contact to explore possible areas of understanding. Macron, who in his first five years governed with a comfortable majority, still has the first parliamentary group, but needs 44 more deputies to reach the threshold of an absolute majority, 289 seats. He has two options: seek a permanent coalition agreement, or negotiate case-by-case agreements with different political forces. The other is to dissolve the Assembly and call new elections.

Borne, a veteran center-left technocrat with little experience in parliamentary life or partisan politics, was appointed in May. After the legislative ones, she has become the weak link of the French Government. Opposition politicians are calling for her resignation, but also in the ranks of Ensemble (Together) – the Macronist electoral coalition – doubts are expressed about her continuity. On Sunday she ran in a constituency in Normandy, where she won with 52.3% of the vote, a narrow margin that does not strengthen her in Paris. It is usual in France that, after legislative elections, the prime minister resigns so that the president reappoints him and commissions him to form a new government.

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