Le Monde: Macron has spent the summer in denial of his defeat, the lumpen left has spent it failing to build a coalition to govern

 The president's justification for this decision is that the other political groups consulted would have quickly overthrown the new government. ... In the absence of any other obvious possibility, it would have been in the interest of democracy for the president to allow the experiment to unfold instead of trying to assert control at all costs in the hope of preserving his policy for as long as possible, even after it has been outvoted. ...

[Macron] has never acted like the clear loser of this election, nor has he clearly accepted the principle of cohabitation.

More.

After Marine Le Pen trounces Macron in EU Parliament elections, the French Republican leader Ciotti backs alliance with Le Pen

 "I think the country has never been so right-wing," Ciotti said. "It expects the right, it expects right-wing action. We can no longer rely on impotence, on communication, on a form of immobilism that has led us to where we are now."

More.

Emmanuel Macron's plans for tax cuts, welfare reform, and raising the retirement age thwarted by resurgent right under LePen and left under Mélenchon in France

French President Emmanuel Macron on Sunday, June 19, lost his absolute majority after major election gains by a newly formed left-wing alliance and a historic breakthrough for the far right, in a stunning blow to his hopes of major reform in his second term.

The run-off election was decisive for Mr. Macron's second-term agenda following his re-election in April, with the 44-year-old needing a majority to secure promised tax cuts and welfare reform and raise the retirement age. ...

The expected number of seats for Marine Le Pen's Rassemblement National (90) amounts to a historic breakthrough. Only once under the Fifth Republic had the far right passed the threshold to form a group in the Assemblée (15 MPs), which allows for certain parliamentary resources and prerogatives.

More here at LeMonde.