Welcome, everybody. I'm Charles Grant, the Director of the Centre for European Reform. We have a podcast today for you on what's happening in France and what it means for Europe. I'm delighted to be joined by my old friend Sophie Peder, who's been the Paris correspondent

of the Economist for roughly as long as I've been running the Centre for Europe and reform,

quite a few years in fact. But she's also the author of a great book on Macron called Revolution

Francais, which is still available in all good bookshops. Sophie, thanks for joining us today. Oh, it's a pleasure always to speak to you, Charles. Thank you. Sophie, we've seen the second round

of the parliamentary elections produce a parliament with no clear majority for any political

grouping. The left-wing alliances in first place, with the highest number of MPs of deputies. Then we

have Macron-centrists in second place place and Marion Le Penz, far right,

Resumano Nacional in third place. Given that nobody seems to be able to form a majority government in

this parliament, what kind of government may emerge? What are the possible scenarios for a new government?

Well, it's a bit of a messy situation at the moment. You have, as you said, no party commanding a

majority in Parliament. The Left Wing

Alliance, that's a new popular front run by Jean-Luc Melanchon's party, and it thinks that it

should be given the first chance to form a government, be able to have a majority, but then again,

President Macron himself didn't have a majority over the last two years himself. So there's a precedent for that.

But Melanchon's lot got a problem, and that is that they cannot agree on who to put forward as the prime minister,

or the sort of putative prime minister.

They are an alliance made up of four different parties that disagree on a lot of things.

Socialists and Greens are

pro-European. Melancho's party is much more Euro-sceptic, and those are just the sort of basic

disagreement. So they can't find a prime minister, and unless they do, they won't be given a chance

to govern. But that's certainly what they think they ought to be able to do. And it's worth

knowing also that that is an alliance that has a fairly kind of vintage socialist program of tax increases,

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