French political leaders from left and right were left unconvinced Thursday by marathon 12-hour talks aimed at finding common ground with President Emmanuel Macron.
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People close to the centrist leader, who has floated the idea of holding referendums as he struggles to build new momentum in a hung parliament, said he would “send a letter summarising the talks and the suggested work areas, that anyone can amend” before a new round of discussion.
But conservative leader Eric Ciotti, Macron’s most obvious potential ally, told broadcaster France 2 hours after the talks broke up at 3:00 am (0100 GMT) that he was “unconvinced for now”.
“I don’t know where any of this will go,” he added, while calling the all-party talks “timely”.
There were harsher words from Manuel Bompard, coordinator of hard-left France Unbowed, who told France Info it had been “grotesque” to “spend 12 hours to get no serious answers, no measures, no concrete announcement, when we know what difficulties the country faces today”.
Olive branch
With referendums in the air, the left is hoping for a public vote to reverse this year’s unpopular pension reform while the conservatives and far-right both want one on immigration.
But people in Macron’s camp — aware referendums have often backfired on French presidents in the past — have floated an alternative, a series of multiple-choice questions dubbed a “preferendum”.
“By asking several questions, people may vent on one of them and respond on the issues on all the others,” government spokesman Olivier Veran told broadcaster BFMTV on Monday.
Constitutional…
