Where did France's culture of political compromise go, and is it coming back?
It took France nine long weeks to form a government after parliamentary elections delivered a deeply divided National Assembly with no faction able to govern alone. The new prime minister has called for compromise – but that won't be easy in a country where meeting in the middle is often synonymous with giving in.
Freshly picked conservative Prime Minister Michel Barnier finally presented his government on Saturday.
Dominated by centrists and fellow right-wingers, former EU commissioner Barnier is nonetheless aware of the challenges in getting a deeply fractured National Assembly to agree on thorny issues like a budget, immigration, tax hikes and possible adjustments to President Emmanuel Macron's controversial pension reform.
“We're going to make compromises. I know the culture of compromise quite well. That's how I managed to unite the 27 countries of the European Union during the Brexit negotiations,” Barnier said in a television interview on Sunday.
Analysing Barnier's comments, French journalist Renaud Dély remarked wryly: “Compromise is not a word we often hear in French political life.”
It isn’t. Nor does France have the tradition of coalition building more commonly found in Germany, Switzerland and Nordic countries.
Read more on RFI English
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