This would lead to a situation known as cohabitation, where the president would be from a different party to the prime minister and the cabinet.

This has been done before, but only when there has been a party with a clear majority, which is not the case now.

But Clement Beaune, the former transport minister and a close ally of Macron, who lost his seat in the election, said the NFP had no entitlement to power.

Writing on social media platform X, he conceded that the election had given the NFP "rights", but said the lack of a majority showed many of its members were not elected in their own right, but as a rejection of RN.

"The only answer is a broad coalition which party leaders must start negotiating," he wrote.

Macron has indicated his openness to forming a so-called rainbow coalition, which could include dissident members of the right-wing Republican party, who declined to join a pre-election pact that party leader Eric Ciotti struck with RN.

But in a sign of how widespread divisions are across the political spectrum, Johanna Rolland, the chief negotiator for the Socialist party, has indicated it might welcome Ensemble members into the fold.

"We will be open," she told television channel France 2. "We are clear-sighted but not sectarian, so those who want to meet us on these bases — I'm thinking, notably, about left-wing Macronists — we'll be open."