PARIS - France will have a new government "next week", recently installed conservative Prime Minister Michel Barnier said Wednesday, as he sounded out candidates to run ministries faced with an unpredictable hung parliament.
"We're going to do things methodically and seriously," Barnier told reporters in the eastern city of Reims, adding that he was "listening to everybody" in a political scene split into three broad camps since July's inconclusive snap parliamentary election.
"We're going to name a government next week," he said.
Barnier, who has served as environment, foreign and agriculture minister and was the EU's former chief Brexit negotiator, was named last week by President Emmanuel Macron as his compromise pick for head of government.
With no longer even a relative majority in parliament following his decision to dissolve the National Assembly, Macron delayed picking a PM for weeks over the summer as he tried to find someone who would not suffer an immediate no-confidence vote.
The chamber is largely divided between Macron's centrist supporters -- now loosely allied with Barnier's rump conservative party -- the left-wing NFP alliance and the far-right National Rally (RN).
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NFP leaders have vowed to vote no confidence in any government not headed by them after they secured the most votes, but fell well short of a majority.
Meanwhile Macron appears to have taken care to find a candidate in Barnier who does not immediately raise the hackles of the RN.
Rumours are swirling in Paris about who might claim key ministries after Barnier said he was open to working with people on the left or right.
"For now, the names in circulation seem to be just wish lists of people wanting to receive a ministerial portfolio," Politico's French edition wrote Wednesday.
One prominent Socialist, Karim Bouamrane, mayor of the Paris suburb of Saint-Ouen, said he had turned down an invitation to serve.
"We have a right-wing prime minister approved of by the RN, a prime minister under supervision," Bouamrane told Franceinfo radio.
An 1 October deadline to file a draft government budget for 2025 has Barnier under pressure to get moving and sets him and his new team up for a fierce battle over taxes and spending.
In particular, both the NFP and RN promised ahead of the July elections to overturn last year's unpopular pension reform that increased the official retirement age to 64 from 62.