France contemplates chaos after the general election with no clear winner and the Olympics

One week after a snap general election that nobody won, and two weeks before it welcomes the world for the Olympic Games, France is still without a new prime minister or government and in political chaos.

As the French celebrate Bastille Day, the national 14 July holiday, the squabbling and stalemate between the three groupings that took the most seats but failed to secure a parliamentary majority continued with warnings that it could be two months before a solution is found.

Asked what happens next, even experienced analysts are floundering. Unlike its neighbours in Europe, France has no history of government coalitions and struggles with the concept of political compromise. Émeric Bréhier, director of the Observatory of Political Life at the Jean-Jaurès Foundation thinktank, told the Observer: “This has never happened before in France. Like the UK, we are used to having a winner and a loser in elections. Today, the reality is that not everyone has lost – apart from Emmanuel Macron who lost his gamble – but nobody has won.”

The legislative election called by Macron, who surprised his own government with the decision, was billed as a means to “clarify” the French political landscape after the far right won the European elections. Instead, it has brought confusion, threats from members of the three almost equal blocs that emerged to bring down any new government that failed to meet their approval, and unions warning of protests and strikes.

Last Sunday, the leftwing alliance the New Popular Front (NFP) won 182 seats, Macron’s centrist Ensemble group 168 seats, the far-right National Rally (RN), 143 seats and the conservative Républicains (LR) 46 seats. Other diverse candidates picked up the remaining 38 seats. Without a compromise, no bloc can hope to form a majority of 289 MPs out of the 577-seat national assembly.

“The problem is that there is no justification that can be argued for this or that group governing. The only majority that exists is a majority that rejected the far right electorally and politically,” Bréhier said. “The left, which won the most seats, has spent days arguing since the election and achieving nothing. It needs to come up with a name for prime minister. If it fails, the president will take things in hand and name one.”

Traditionally, the president asks the leader of the party with a majority to form a government and names a prime minister. The radical-left France Unbowed (LFI), the group that won the most seats in the New Popular Front bloc, has proposed four candidates for prime minister, including the party’s hardline leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon. The Socialist party (PS), which was due to meet on Saturday, is likely to propose its leader Olivier Faure, while the Communist party has suggested the relatively unknown Huguette Bello, president of the regional council on the French overseas territory Réunion. Others have suggested finding someone above party politics.

With France Unbowed and National Rally threatening to veto any government that includes the other, an alliance of moderates of the left, the Macron centre and the Gaullist centre right thrashing out a common programme appears the most promising solution. An alternative, Bréhier says, is a minority government through which each piece of legislation would require the forming of ad hoc alliances to pass.

Sylvain Maillard, from Macron’s Renaissance, said his party would lodge a vote of no confidence if LFI was given power and suggested it would take time to find “a greater coalition”. He said: “We can live in a parallel world but mathematics shows [the left] have less than 200 MPs.”

Others see Macron, who until now has micromanaged the government, being forced to step back from domestic issues and concentrate on the presidential prerogative of defence and foreign policy, where the constitution allows him certain direct powers.

Last week, Macron published an open letter calling for “republican political forces” to unite to build a “solid [parliamentary] majority”.

Afterwards, conservative former prime minister Dominique de Villepin said that the new premier should come from the left. “One of the risks, if we continue with the current confusion, is that everyone will realise that no one has any political interest in leading this government. And that, in the end, the president will find himself faced with chaos. So he will face the question of whether resigning is the only way to resolve [the situation].”

The first challenge will come on Thursday when the national assembly sits for the first time since the election to elect a president of the lower house – the equivalent of Britain’s speaker – and the government officially resigns. Since a 2008 constitutional revision inspired by the House of Commons’ binary system, this has been followed by the designation of parliamentary groups including a majority party and a minority opposition and the distribution of committee and other posts.

“With the proliferation of opposition and minority groups, we risk having problems with the agenda. If you have a dozen groups, they will only be able to table a bill every year and a half”, the constitutional expert Benjamin Morel said.

The only thing everyone agrees on is that the process of forming a new government that will not fall at the first vote of no confidence is likely to be tortuous.

“At the moment, nobody can pull an answer out of the hat,” Bréhier said. “Macron wanted this to be the great clarification – instead it’s become the great confusion.”