Will France have a "rainbow" government this autumn? As the second round of France's snap parliamentary elections draws near, the coalition that Emmanuel Macron has failed to build since losing his absolute majority in 2022 is now being discussed, at a time when the far right is on the brink of seizing power.

The head of the far-right Rassemblement National (RN) party, Jordan Bardella, reiterated in the newspaper Le Figaro on Wednesday, July 3, that he would only accept being appointed prime minister if he obtained an absolute majority (289 seats). According to Prime Minister Gabriel Attal, the far-right party is "the only one currently capable of obtaining an absolute majority in the Assemblée Nationale." If it were to achieve only a relative majority on July 7, notably because of the large number of tactical withdrawals performed by other candidates to help beat the RN, then it would be necessary to "find unprecedented solutions" to avoid institutional deadlock, centrist MoDem party leader François Bayrou warned on FranceInfo on Tuesday.

Only a vast anti-RN coalition could form such an alternative majority. The MoDem head therefore called on "republicans" and "democrats" to "sit down around a table" and "assume their responsibilities." On Monday, Attal had already suggested "a plural Assemblée" as an alternative to the RN, with "several political groups from the right, the left and the center, working together on a project-by-project basis to serve the French people's interests" and implement "new governance and a new way of operating."

La France Insoumise (LFI, radical left) , which is expected to represent the leading left-wing force in the Assemblée, ruled out taking part in this potential coalition on Tuesday. "LFI members will only govern to apply their platform, nothing but the platform," said Manuel Bompard, the top official of Jean-Luc Mélenchon's party, on Tuesday.

For her part, the Greens' leader Marine Tondelier said on the TF1's 8 pm news program that "we will certainly have to do things that no one has ever done before in this country," in the event of an Assemblée without a clear majority. However, the party leader believed that this coalition "should be built around the formation that came out on top, which is to say, around the Nouveau Front Populaire" and not the presidential bloc.

At the same time, speaking on the channel France 2, former president François Hollande also endorsed the coalition approach. "The left must be a solution, not just a block" against the far right, asserted the Socialist candidate, who could be elected to his old seat in Parliament.

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