Yaël Braun-Pivet of Macron’s centrist party re-elected as new President of the National Assembly

Yaël Braun-Pivet of Macron’s centrist party is reelected as the new President of the National Assembly with 220 votes against André Chassaigne who obtained 207 votes.

Braun-Pivet, 53, has been the speaker of the National Assembly since 2022 and she retained her post Thursday after three rounds of votes in the lower house of parliament.

She received the support of Macron’s centrist allies and of some conservative lawmakers seeking to prevent her leftist contender, a communist lawmaker, from getting the job.

Braun-Pivet is the first woman to hold this position. She previously served as Minister of Overseas Territories under Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne for two months in 2022 and has been a member of parliament since 2017.

France’s influential lower house of parliament, the National Assembly, convened on Thursday to elect a speaker following chaotic snap elections called by President Emmanuel Macron that resulted in a hung legislature.

After two inconclusive rounds of voting, outgoing Speaker Yaël Braun-Pivet of Macron’s centrist party received 210 votes, leftist coalition candidate and communist lawmaker André Chassaigne had 202 votes, Sébastien Chenu of the far-right RN came third with 143 votes.

The recent parliamentary elections split the assembly among three major political blocs: the New Popular Front leftist coalition, Macron’s centrist allies, and the far-right National Rally party, with none securing an outright majority.

The National Assembly’s session followed Macron’s acceptance of Prime Minister Gabriel Attal’s resignation, along with other ministers, on Tuesday. They were asked to remain in a caretaker capacity until a new government is appointed, as France prepares to host the Paris Olympics at the end of the month.

From Woodstock, England, where he was attending a European leaders’ summit, Macron declined to comment on France’s political situation and did not specify when a new prime minister would be named. “I will not answer that question,” he said.

Politicians from the three main blocs and smaller parties had been vying for the speaker position, with each camp hoping to influence the future prime ministerial nomination. Six candidates were in the running.

A candidate must secure at least half of the votes from the 577 lawmakers in the National Assembly in the first or second round of voting to be elected. If no candidate achieves this, the one with the most votes in the third round wins.

Members of the New Popular Front, which won the most seats in the assembly, have urged the president to consider them for forming the new government. However, its main parties — the hard-left France Unbowed, the Socialists, the Greens, and the Communists— are still in dispute over their prime ministerial candidate.

After days of intense discussions, they had agreed on a joint candidacy for the speaker role and chose 74-year-old André Chassaigne, a prominent figure in the Communist party known for his extensive parliamentary work.

Unions and left-wing activists staged protests across the country on Thursday to pressure Macron into selecting a prime minister from the New Popular Front.

There is no set timeline for when the president must appoint a new prime minister.