New French MPs arrive for first day at National Assembly
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00:00And let's cross now to Luke Brown who's at the National Assembly. Luke, no rest for the
00:04wicked it seems. Some of the new MPs are already turning up for their first day on the job.
00:11Yeah here at the National Assembly the gates of the Palais Bourbon that you can see behind me
00:15opened at 2pm about an hour and a half ago and there's been a slow trickle of
00:19MPs, the newly elected and the re-elected arriving here. A bit of an anecdote as they go up the steps
00:25into the building itself they turn around for photographs and the photographers ask them
00:30systematically to give them their name and where it is they're elected just to give you an idea of
00:34just how many unknown faces there are elected in the 577 new MPs. Now as they head inside they'll
00:41be discovering many for the first time the National Assembly itself and their seat in the
00:45hemicycle so it is of course a deal of emotion and tradition that will be residing today. They
00:51will also be finding out receiving their official telephones, their official tricolor scarves that
00:56they'll be wearing for official events but not yet necessarily being distributed the keys to
01:02the offices because the keys to the offices aren't yet being decided on until the formation of the
01:07parliamentary groups is decided on and that gives you an idea of just how much uncertainty despite
01:12the arrival of the MPs today how much uncertainty does still remain here at the National Assembly.
01:18And is there any sense where you are among those you might have spoken to
01:22as to what they think could be the likeliest scenario regarding a coalition?
01:30Well the MPs are speaking to some of the journalists in the courtyard here of the
01:35Palais Bourbon and there's a lot of shrugs it has to be said for some of the first arrivals
01:39about what exactly is likely to be the form of the future of the government here in France.
01:44There's a desire from one MP that we spoke to to turn the page on the very tense past three weeks
01:49but on the other hand another MP from the National Rally said it's impossible to predict who will be
01:53the Prime Minister by the 18th of July that's when the next session of the National Assembly
02:00will open. We've been hearing from some of the different political parties themselves perhaps
02:04they're not in a position of power but the centrists of course of Renaissance, of Ensemble,
02:09of the Macron governing coalition well they do have some weight still in the National Assembly
02:13of course they did better than expected. One of their MPs said they would be refusing to make
02:19any coalition at all with the extremes of both left and the right so clearly that will exclude
02:25them working together with the France unbowed. Perhaps most interestingly though is the the view
02:30of the new popular front one of the MPs that we have been hearing from said that this the
02:36uncertainty may actually have an advantage for French politics moving forward. The three main
02:41groups now installing themselves into the National Assembly that does actually hand power back to
02:48parliament. Remember here in France in the Fifth Republic the presidential system many of the
02:52presidents Emmanuel Macron himself included have been criticized for monopolizing too much power
02:58forcing him into this cohabitation this sharing of power is likely to enable a change of policy
03:05in the months ahead.