FRANCE HAS BEEN in a political deadlock for seven weeks since the country went to the polls.
The result of President Emmanuel Macron’s snap parliamentary elections divided the Assemblée Nationale into three blocks – left, centre and far-right – with none having a majority of seats to form a government.
While the left-wing alliance won the most seats, talks with Macron have not proved fruitful, with the president coming in for criticism after he rejected the left’s candidate for prime minister on Monday.
Here’s what we know about the aftermath of the messy election, and what might happen next.
The French parliament is made up of two houses: the Senate, which is the upper house, and the Assemblée Nationale – or National Assembly, the lower house.
Senators in France are elected by an electoral college, which includes regional councillors, mayors and members of the National Assembly.
The Senate is made up of 348 senators who have six-year terms, with half of the seats up for election every three years.
The last election, however, focused on the National Assembly, the more powerful of France’s two legislative chambers. It has 577 members, who are elected directly by the population for a term of five years.
In France, only the president has the power to appoint a prime minister, and there is no legal obligation to choose someone from the largest group in the assembly.
Ministers are also appointed by the president, on the recommendation of the prime minister.
The July election left the 577-seat National Assembly divided between the left-wing New Popular Front (NFP) alliance, Macron’s centrist grouping Ensemble and Marine Le Pen’s National Rally.
🗞 La une du Monde au lendemain des législatives pic.twitter.com/z3Gy6rXMon
— Le Monde (@lemondefr) July 8, 2024
The NFP alliance is made up of the country’s four largest left-wing parties – the hard-left La France Insoumise (France Unbowed – LFI), the Socialist Party, the Greens, and the Communist Party of France (PCF), along with their respective allies.
Having formed only a month before France went to the polls in an effort to challenge the far-right, it achieved its aim and won 190 seats, becoming the largest bloc in the parliament.
Macron’s Ensemble, which had been the largest grouping before that, won 160 seats, with Le Pen’s National Rally taking 140 seats.
Following the result, Macron said he would “wait for the structure of the new National Assembly to make the necessary decisions”.
With no outright majority, it’s down to negotiations among parties and with the president to determine whether a coalition government can be formed with an outright majority of 289 seats.
Dr Elodie Fabre, professor in politics at Queen’s University Belfast, told The Journal that the situation is unprecedented.
We’ve never been in this situation in the Fifth Republic. This is entirely new. There’s no precedent of a president’s party having been such a minority in parliament.
“The institutions of the Fifth Republic are very much designed around majoritarianism as a principle of government. The idea is a president gets elected, and then they get a parliamentary majority to support their action,” she said.
Where that hasn’t been the case, there were still coalition governments who had a parliamentary majority where the president could appoint the obvious lead candidate as prime minister.
“Under Macron, we’ve had minority governments that were dominated by his party, and in those instances, he hasn’t hesitated to appoint someone from his own party.”
Not very well.
Macron was criticised for putting off talks around forming a government until after the Summer Olympics in Paris, which took place between 26 July and 11 August. He kicked off consultations with the parties last week.
NFP has insisted that the new prime minister should be from their ranks because it is the largest group, but centrist and right-wing parties have vowed to vote down a left-wing government in any confidence vote.
The left alliance nominated 37-year-old Lucie Castets, a relatively unknown economist and civil servant, to be the new head of government.
But after negotiations with Marine Le Pen and other political leaders on Monday, Macron ruled out naming a left-wing government, saying it would be a threat to “institutional stability”.
While some reports said Macron had wanted to name a prime minister on Tuesday, the president instead said he would embark on a new round of negotiations.
LFI Jean-Luc Melenchon had suggested he could back a left-wing government led by Castets without ministers from his own party, but this has been opposed by Macron and centre-right parties.
Macron has repeatedly called LFI an “extreme” movement, attempting to equate the party with Le Pen’s far-right party.
“My responsibility is that the country is not blocked nor weakened,” he said in a statement, calling on “all political leaders to rise to the occasion by demonstrating a spirit of responsibility”.
A purely left-wing government “would be immediately censored by all the other groups represented in the National Assembly” and “the institutional stability of our country therefore requires us not to choose this option”, Macron said.
He said he would talk with party leaders and “personalities distinguished by experience in the service of the state and the Republic”.
He also appealed to three of the four left-wing parties – the Socialists, Greens and Communists – to “cooperate with other political forces” to find a way out of the deadlock, without mentioning LFI.
It’s understood Macron will not hold further talks with the LFI or the National Rally, nor with Eric Ciotti, leader of the right-wing Republicans (LR), who had allied himself with Le Pen’s far-right party for the snap election.
Fabre said that while the French President has the constitutional competency to appoint the country’s prime minister, Macron seems to be viewing his powers “as more than that”.
“The constitution says the president appoints the prime minister, the prime minister forms a government,” she said.
Macron argues that his role as guarantor of stability and the constitution means that he can’t just appoint anyone as prime minister. He needs to appoint someone who might have a wider backing in parliament.
A left-wing government would not align with what the president has already implemented in France, according to Fabre.
“A big part of this is because the programme of the left, which, of course, they can’t implement as elected because they haven’t got a parliamentary majority for this, but their programme is undoing quite a few of Macron’s own policies, and he doesn’t really want that,” she said.
This includes the controversial pension reform that Macron signed into law last year despite massive protests against it, as well as tax breaks for big companies.
Again, not very well.
The LFI’s national coordinator Manuel Bompard called Macron’s comments an “unacceptable anti-democratic coup”.
In a post on social media, the party called for marches and protests “for respect for democracy”.
LFI leader Melenchon called for a “firm and strong response” by the public and politicians, including a “motion of impeachment” against the president.
Communist party leader Fabien Roussel called for a “grand popular mobilisation” and rejected new talks. Green party leader Marine Tondelier said “the people must get rid of Macron for the good of democracy. He is chaos and instability.”
In an interview with broadcaster France Info, Tondelier likened Macron’s decision as a “denial of democracy”, saying: “We are in the process of having this election stolen from us.”
She also said that NFP would reject any government “that is not left-wing”.
In a sign of fracturing opinion on the left, Pierre Jouvet, the Socialists’ secretary-general, said that its supporters do not plan to take part in protests, and hinted that they were open to further discussions with the president.
“We are not calling for people to take to the streets at this stage,” Jouvet said in an interview with France Info. “The emergency is in the debate, in the political discussion, even if Emmanuel Macron’s decision worries us deeply.”
That remains unclear.
The Greens and the Socialists refused to meet Macron for a new round of talks yesterday.
Socialist boss Olivier Faure said he would “not be an accomplice to a parody of democracy” and that his deputies would back a no-confidence motion against any government not put forward by the NFP.
He accused the president of seeking to “prolong Macronism” and said he would take part in street protests.
Macron met with a group of independent deputies yesterday, and will today meet representatives from Les Republicains, a centre-right party, and a number of other conservative figures.
It’s thought that Macron would prefer an alliance with the traditional right and part of the centre-left, with the name of former minister and current head of the northern Hauts de France region, Xavier Bertrand, frequently cited as a candidate to lead a centre-focused coalition.
The current government, headed by Prime Minister Gabriel Attal, has carried on in a caretaker capacity since the election took place.
Macron’s office has not given any indication about the president’s timetable for naming a prime minister, but the clock is running to 1 October, the legal deadline by which a government must present a draft budget law for 2025.
If a coalition can’t be formed, Macron has the option of appointing a technocratic government – that is, a cabinet made up of experts with no political affiliations which all parties could get behind.
It has previously been seen in Italy, where former European Central Bank chief Mario Draghi formed a national unity government in 2021 when Italy was in turmoil. It lasted a year-and-a-half.
Macron could also decide to leave the current government led by Attal in place in a caretaker capacity for a year. He could then call new elections. But whether the other parties would support this move is highly uncertain.
“What [Macron] wants to do, ultimately, is break away the entirety or part of the Socialist Party from that coalition of the left,” Fabre said.
“Then they would come and support a coalition made up of his party, some centrist parties, a bit on the right, some of the small centre-right parties, and potentially some sort of legislative support from the remnants of La République. That’s his ideal scenario.”
She said that a meeting of the National Executive of the Socialist Party yesterday shows that while some people want to keep negotiating with Macron, they are the minority opinion in the party.
It’s “impossible to predict” what the outcome will be, she added.
With reporting from © AFP 2024
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