A split screen view of reaction to results tonight showing left and right: Share 19m ago 23.53 BST A senior member of German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s party says that the election result means that France has “avoided the worst” but added that President Emmanuel Macron has been “politically weakened”. “The worst is avoided, the RN cannot form a governing majority,” Nils Schmid, the Social Democratic Party (SPD) foreign policy spokesman in the German parliament, told the Funke press group. Despite his weakened position Macron would retain a “central role” due to the fact that no party can claim an outright majority, he continued. Forming a government will be “tricky” and parties must show “flexibility” and an “ability to compromise”, said Schmid. Germany is used to unwieldy coalitions and lengthy negotiations; Scholz’s government is made up of his Social Democratic party plus the Greens and the liberal FDP. Share 43m ago 23.29 BST Who would be the left-wing candidate for prime minister? President Emmanuel Macron can choose whoever he wants as the next prime minister according to the constitution, but in practice he needs to chose someone acceptable to parliament – usually the leader of the largest party. Jean-Luc Mélenchon, leader of hard-left France Unbowed (LFI), the biggest party in the left-wing bloc, which has come out on top in the polls, says prime minister Gabriel Attal “has to go” and that the French left is “ready to govern”. But it’s unclear who the alliance’s candidate to be prime minister would be, given that Mélenchon is a divisive figure even within his own party. LFI lawmaker Clementine Autain called on the NFP alliance to gather on Monday to decide on a suitable candidate for prime minister. The alliance, “in all its diversity”, needed “to decide on a balance point to be able to govern”, she said, AFP reported, adding neither former Socialist president François Hollande nor Mélenchon would do. The leader of the Socialist Party (PS) Olivier Faure urged “democracy” within the left-wing alliance so they could work together. “To move forward together we need democracy within our ranks,” he said. “No outside remarks will come and impose themselves on us,” he said in a thinly veiled criticism of Mélenchon. Share This is what we"re up against Teams of lawyers from the rich and powerful trying to stop us publishing stories they don’t want you to see. Lobby groups with opaque funding who are determined to undermine facts about the climate emergency and other established science. Authoritarian states with no regard for the freedom of the press. Bad actors spreading disinformation online to undermine democracy. *** But we have something powerful on our side. We’ve got you. The Guardian is funded by readers, like you in Egypt, and the only person who decides what we publish is our editor. If you want to join us in our mission to share independent, global journalism to the world, we’d love to have you on side. Please choose to support us today. It only takes a minute and you can cancel at any time. Thank you.