PARIS — France will hold the second round of local elections on June 28, coronavirus permitting, Prime Minister Edouard Philippe said Friday.

While there is “no consensus” among political parties on holding the vote at the end of June, Philippe said the government’s “careful, progressive and reversible” lockdown exit plan would allow it to be held in a safe way, just as economic and social life are slowly getting back to normal.

“After weighing the pros and cons, we think that democratic life too should resume,” Philippe said at a press conference.

However, he pointed out that the decision to hold the election is “reversible” depending on whether there is a resurgence of the epidemic.

Beyond health considerations, holding the election in June instead of postponing it until later in the year would allow President Emmanuel Macron to turn the page on an election in which his La République en Marche movement performed poorly in the first round, as he looks to reset his mandate post-coronavirus.

Philippe, who is in a run-off to be mayor of Havre in the north of the country, also benefits from holding the second round sooner rather than later. His approval ratings are currently among the highest they’ve been since the beginning of his tenure. If he wins the mayoral race, it would also give him a dignified landing place if the rumors about Macron wanting to sack him turn out to be true.

The vote was originally meant to be held on March 22, but had to be postponed because of the epidemic. Macron controversially insisted the first round of the election take place on March 15, even though he imposed a nationwide lockdown a day later.

Worries about voter turnout and the election’s credibility persist. Voter turnout during the first round was historically low at 45.5 percent, compared with 63.5 percent in the 2014 local elections.

On Tuesday, Macron spoke with two dozen, mostly opposition, mayors of some of the biggest cities in France and they were almost all in favor of holding the vote on June 28.

Postponing the election beyond the summer would legally require canceling the results of the first round and starting over. The majority of mayors across the country were elected in the first round but most mayors of big cities, including Paris, are in a second round run-off.

Nevertheless, Richard Ferrand, the speaker of the lower house of parliament and an LREM heavyweight close to Macron, voiced his opposition to holding the vote at the end of June, arguing that health conditions were suboptimal for proper campaigning.

“Democracy isn’t just voting. It’s campaigns that allow debates and [they] can’t be held, because gathering of more than 10 people are not allowed, and one can’t go door-to-door with a mask on,” Ferrand said, referring to current health guidelines.

Speaking alongside Philippe, Interior Minister Christophe Castaner pointed out that while campaigning will have to be adapted to respect health guidelines, candidates would have a month to campaign, which is considerably longer than the usual five days between the two rounds.

The scientific council advising the government through the epidemic said in a written opinion on Monday that for the second round to be held, strict health guidelines needed to be enforced, including social distancing while queueing to vote, making masks and face shields compulsory for polling station staff and recommending voters wear masks.

Reintroducing postal ballots and allowing multiple proxy votes are some of the measures being considered by the government to ensure that vulnerable voters can still take part.

Sony Kapoor is managing director of Re-Define, an international think tank.

OSLO — The Franco-German plan for a €500 billion “recovery fund” has been welcomed with superlatives such as “Hamiltonian,” “stunning,” “a game changer” and the somewhat slightly less hagiographic “surprisingly ambitious.” In actual fact, it is just a damp squib.

The appropriate criteria by which to judge such a proposal are 1) Is it big enough? 2) Is it timely? 3) Does it set a powerful new precedent? 4) How does it fare in the context of the times? and the 5) What is its long-term impact? Sadly, the recovery fund falls far short of even “adequate” on all five.

Let’s start with the fund’s size. The coronavirus has trigged a global economic crisis in which the economies of some EU countries could shrink by between 10 percent and 20 percent. The recovery fund’s €500 billion amounts to a mere 3.5 percent of EU GDP to be distributed over three to four years. That’s not a game changer.

Nor are the countries that were hardest hit by the crisis likely to get the most money. Resistance from Northern and Eastern Europe make it highly unlikely that hard-it southern countries such as Italy or Spain will get more than twice their quota of about 1 percent of GDP per year. Is a 2 percent of GDP grant to Spain and Italy helpful? Yes. Is it macroeconomically significant? No.

In truth, the idea that this is the first step in the creation of a “fiscal union” is nothing but hyperbole.

The fund also fails the test of timeliness with disbursements unlikely to reach countries before next year. To offset the permanent economic damage being done by lockdowns, governments need money now.

While Germany has been able to act decisively with more domestic economic support than all the other EU countries put together, Italy and Spain have been more hesitant to act, because of their heavy debt burdens. Further delays in getting aid will leave even deeper scars in their economies that could have been prevented.

The picture is no better when it comes to setting a precedent. Even commentators who acknowledge the fund is far too small have waxed lyrical about how it “crosses the Rubicon,” “breaks taboos” or change the game the way the U.S. Revolutionary War hero Alexander Hamilton did when he federalized the debts of the various U.S. states in 1790.

In truth, the idea that this is the first step in the creation of a “fiscal union” is nothing but hyperbole.

First of all, there’s little here that’s actually new. The European Commission already has €52 billion of bonds outstanding, and cohesion and structural funds already entail transfers between EU countries. The European Stability Mechanism and the European Financial Stability Facility already saw EU governments band together to borrow to aid troubled members, albeit in the form of loans, not grants.

What the recovery fund does not do is make provisions for a permanent increase in the EU’s meager budget or give the Commission the ability to raise its own funds. Nor will existing debt be subsumed into a fiscal union as Hamilton did. Not even the responsibility for the new debt being created will be shared jointly among all EU countries, as the now abandoned initiative for “coronabonds” proposed. The recovery fund is a step toward a dead-end, not a fiscal union.

Put in the context of the time, the recovery fund looks even worse. The initiative can be seen as the German establishment’s attempt to make up for the sins of its constitutional court, which threw a Molotov cocktail into the EU’s legal and economic order in early May by challenging the actions of the European Central Bank and the Court of Justice of the European Union.

However the German court’s decision finally plays out, its immediate impact is to put a de-facto political constraint on the size and asymmetry of the ECB’s quantitative easing programs, thereby limiting the ability of the most effective institution in the eurozone to respond to a crisis with appropriate size and timeliness. Italy and Spain would have been better off with an unconstrained ECB and no recovery fund.

The longer-term consequences of the fund itself may also prove to be negative. It has killed any genuine prospect of a true, much-needed eurobond for good, leaving any “Hamiltonian moment” for future, potentially weaker, leaders. Even worse, absent future political agreements, the need to repay the debt incurred by the recovery fund will hollow out the already scarce EU budget.

EU politics is becoming more, not less contentious. If we can’t set aside our petty, parochial politics amid a global pandemic to move toward a fiscal union now, we never will.