The incandescent Olympic cauldron burned one last time on the evening of Sunday, August 11 – it will be relit at the end of the month for the Paralympic Games – while Zaho de Sagazan, sang "Sous le ciel de Paris," kicking off the closing ceremony of the Olympic Games from the Tuileries Gardens.
In the stands of the Stade de France, President Emmanuel Macron, who had returned the day before from the south of France, was savoring these last few hours of concord. "All those who didn't believe in the Games were wrong," he told L'Equipe after the ceremony, praising the French people's "capacity for enthusiasm and emotion."
"There is one loser: The spirit of defeat," he said.
With the end of the Olympic Games, which have enthralled the French and the whole world, comes the end of an enchanted interlude, and therefore the end of the Olympic "political truce" pronounced by the French president on July 23.
Five weeks after the second round of legislative elections, in which the former governing coalition lost 73 seats, Macron still has to appoint a prime minister to form a government. Nothing has filtered down from his consultations at the Fort de Brégançon, the presidential holiday residence which he returned to on July 28, and where he will spend most of the coming week. On the phone, he tested a handful of names (Xavier Bertrand, Michel Barnier, Bernard Cazeneuve, Jean-Louis Borloo) with his regular contacts, but revealed nothing of his intentions.
The timing of the appointment has not yet been decided either. Some in the presidential camp are hoping for a rapid announcement, as early as during the week of August 19, so that the government can plunge without delay into the delicate equation of the budget, which has to be tied up at the end of September for submission to the Assemblée Nationale by the first Tuesday in October at the latest.
By September 20, France, which has just been placed under an excessive deficit procedure by the European Commission, will also have to present its medium-term plan explaining how it intends to correct its trajectory. All these crucial deadlines argue in favor of a rapid appointment of the new team.
But others feel that the parties and parliamentary groups have not had enough time to mature, and that they still need to think about programmatic options and possible convergences. "We're spending too much time on casting and not enough on the 'what for?', which is the only way out of the impasse," said one outgoing minister, who was convinced that Macron – who, throughout the Games, stood by French medal winners, from Léon Marchand to Teddy Riner – was in no hurry to end the truce.
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