French government resigns, stays on for now in caretaker role

By Elizabeth Pineau

PARIS (Reuters) -French centrist Prime Minister Gabriel Attal and his government resigned on Tuesday, but will stay on in a caretaker capacity until a new cabinet is appointed following an inconclusive snap election.

The caretaker government will run current affairs in the euro zone's second-largest economy, but cannot submit new laws to parliament or make any major changes, experts say.

Its role will include making sure that the Olympics, that start on July 26, run smoothly.

"Handling current affairs means implementing measures already decided and managing emergencies that arise. No more no less," said Mathieu Disant, a law professor at Paris' Panthéon-Sorbonne university.

"An outgoing government is deprived of its full powers. This completely - and quite logically - deprives it of any margin for political action."

There have been caretaker governments before in France, but none has ever stayed on for more than a few days. There is no set limit to how long an acting government can stay on. Parliament cannot force it to quit.

Strict rules on the separation of powers do not usually allow ministers in France to be lawmakers simultaneously.

But their resignations, even if they stay on in a caretaker capacity, will allow Attal and other members of the government to sit in parliament and take part in the election of the assembly's president when it convenes on Thursday, experts say.

"SHIPWRECK?"

Who becomes president of the assembly, equivalent to a speaker who organises the chamber's agenda and runs debates, is crucial at a time when it is still unclear who will run the government as no party or group has an absolute majority.

A left-wing alliance that unexpectedly topped the June 30 and July 7 election, and which has since been fighting bitterly over who to put forward as prime minister, hopes to agree on a name for parliament chief.

"Never before has the election of the president of the assembly held such a political significance," Eurointelligence analysts said.

For the left, they said, the aim was to show it "has what it takes to command a majority in the assembly. For the centrists, it is to demonstrate the opposite."

The New Popular Front (NFP), an alliance ranging from socialists and Greens to the communist party and the hard-left France Unbowed, was hastily assembled before the election.

After it failed to win an absolute majority, years of tensions between the parties have resurfaced over who could run a possible left-wing government.

Complicating matters, Macron has called on mainstream parties to forge an alliance to form a government, an option that would include some of the NFP but exclude France Unbowed.

"If we don't manage to find a solution in the hours, the days, to come, it would be a shipwreck," Communist Party leader Fabien Roussel told BFM TV, describing the state of talks among left-wing parties as "deplorable."

(Reporting by Elizabeth Pineau, Additional reporting by Gabriel Stargardter, Blandine Henault; Writing by Ingrid Melander, Editing by Timothy Heritage)