France on Eve of Olympics Is at a Political Impasse, With Unrest Brewing

France is stuck.

Almost a week after a legislative election that produced a deadlocked Parliament, and two weeks from the start of the Paris Olympics, discord reigns and nobody can even agree on whether the vote produced a winner.

The left thinks it won. The right argues that France voted for it, if the 146 seats of the far-right National Rally are included. The center, diminished, wants to bridge the divide but for now nobody is interested.

Next week, on July 18, the new National Assembly is constitutionally obliged to gather for the first time. It will attempt to name a president of the Assembly in an atmosphere of deep mistrust and national restiveness. The caretaker prime minister, Gabriel Attal, is scarcely on speaking terms with his former mentor, President Emmanuel Macron, who did not consult him on his abrupt decision last month to call an election.

The New Popular Front, a left-wing alliance that won the most seats but fell far short of an absolute majority, claims victory. It has promised all week to propose a prime minister from its ranks, but it has yet to reach agreement on who that will be.

The impasse reflects internal discord, above all between moderate socialists and the far-left France Unbowed party. It is just one of many deadlocks within the larger French paralysis.

Sophie Binet, the general secretary of the large General Confederation of Labor union, has called for massive demonstrations in front of the National Assembly to press for the naming of a left-wing government. “Macron wants to steal our victory,” she wrote this week in the newspaper Libération.