Macron must be impeached for failing to appoint PM, says Mélenchon

The leader of the radical left France Unbowed party has called for impeachment proceedings against President Macron for his failure to anoint a new government six weeks after his defeat in a snap election.
Jean-Luc Mélenchon, 73, accused Macron of behaving like Viktor Orban, Hungary’s authoritarian leader, and the guillotined King Louis XVI. He also accused the president of “staging a coup against democracy” to keep power in the hands of his centrist camp.
The impeachment threat, which would require an implausible parliamentary vote to bring the president to trial before the senate, was largely symbolic and aimed at raising pressure on the head of state amid anger over France’s continuing deadlock. Since the two-round parliamentary elections ended inconclusively on July 7, with the left alliance in the lead, France has ­experienced a government vacuum.
Macron, who has three years left in office, is obliged by the constitution to appoint a prime minister to form a government, taking account of the election, in which the New Popular Front alliance won a slim relative majority over his centrists and Marine Le Pen’s hard-right National Rally.
The president delayed action until after the Paris Olympics, which ended on August 11, and rejected the left’s choice of prime minister, Lucie Castets, a 37-year-old economist. He called on moderate parties of the left and right to forge a coalition that would exclude the extremes and his government has remained as a caretaker under Gabriel Attal, the centrist prime minister.
Macron, still on holiday at Fort de Brégançon, his Mediterranean retreat, has called party leaders to the Élysée Palace on Friday to “build the most stable majority possible”.
He is ready to take an “umpire’s” role, aides say, envisaging a new coalition consisting of moderates, rather than a government containing the radical leftists who are bent on unravelling his economic and social reforms.
However, his hopes of peeling the moderate Socialists away from their shaky alliance with the radicals who dominate them have been unfulfilled.
“Macron appears to be on the point of appointing a head of government without taking account of the results of the parliamentary elections, which he lost after having already lost the European elections,” Mélenchon said. “Here we are in ‘illiberalism’ that the Macron people claim to see in Viktor Orban. He must know that all constitutional means will be used to remove him.”
The first task of the new government will be to draft a 2025 budget that will satisfy demands from the EU that France curbs its excessive state ­spending.
François Bayrou, a close Macron ally, said French politics was undergoing “shadow theatre” because “no one wants to govern because everyone is thinking of the next presidential election”.