Day after the legislative elections | In France, negotiations begin

After the excitement, the headache. The day after the results of the legislative elections that did not produce a clear winner, France wondered on Monday what its political future would look like in the short and medium term.

The problem is that no camp seems able to govern alone. Because neither the New Popular Front (NFP, around 180 seats), nor the presidential camp (Ensemble, around 159 seats), nor the National Rally (RN) and its allies (143 seats) have obtained an absolute majority in the National Assembly, set at 289 deputies.

Hence this climate of uncertainty, even bewilderment, a few weeks before the start of the Olympic Games in Paris.

Coming in first, the NFP (which includes the La France Insoumise party, the Socialist Party, the Ecologists party and the Communist Party) assured Monday that it would propose “within the week” a prime minister to replace Gabriel Attal, who presented his resignation on Monday, but who was kept on by Emmanuel Macron to “ensure stability” during this uncertain period.

Lacking weight, the left bloc would nevertheless have difficulty imposing this scenario of “cohabitation” on Emmanuel Macron, who has the final say on the choice of prime minister, and whose centrist program is not very compatible with the more radical ideology of La France Insoumise, the majority party within the NFP.

A coalition, but with whom?

Another scenario is that of a coalition government, a scenario never seen in France since the beginning of the V^e Republic. This probability, however, raises many questions and will undoubtedly require a great deal of negotiation. Because the Assembly is currently divided into three roughly equal blocs that hate each other.

We already know that the National Rally will not be able to find allies to form a majority. The same goes for the New Popular Front, which includes the party La France Insoumise and its leader, the polarizing Jean-Luc Mélenchon, considered unapproachable by the Ensemble bloc (which brings together the parties Renaissance, Horizons and Mouvement démocrate).

There is, however, a rumour that the more moderate parties of the NFP (Socialist Party, Ecologists, Communists) could form a “republican arc” with the central bloc, thus failing the 72 deputies of La France Insoumise.

But this scenario seems unlikely in the eyes of Simon Persico, considering that the NFP currently benefits from a “fairly strong dynamic, which has mobilized many voters on the ground”, and that a good number of socialist elected officials owe their victory to the withdrawals of LFI candidates during the two-round election, in order to block the RN.

An alliance between the central bloc and the Les Républicains (LR) party – which does not belong to any bloc and which won around sixty seats – would therefore be more likely, although this option has been ruled out for the moment by Laurent Wauquiez, a leading member of the LR party, re-elected on Sunday evening.

Whatever the case, we still seem far from a new parliamentary configuration.

“In any normally constituted regime, these people would sit around the table with their demands and their compromises and would succeed in making a coalition program. But France does not have this political culture at all… I am not saying that it is impossible, but that it is not obvious and that it could take time…”, says Simon Persico.

Nothing before July 18th

According to Jean-Pierre Beaud, professor of political science at UQAM, we could however have an indication of what will happen next on July 18, when the new deputies will be responsible for electing the next president of the National Assembly, the third most important person behind the President of the Republic and the President of the Senate.

“This is where possible coalitions will be able to begin to emerge,” believes the expert.

Mr. Beaud predicts that an alliance between Emmanuel Macron and LR could then emerge, with the support of the forty or so “unaffiliated” deputies from various right and various center, at the end of a third round of voting, requiring only a relative majority. This scenario could open the way to a future parliamentary coalition.

Jean-Pierre Beaud suggests that the current president of the Senate, Gérard Larcher, could then impose himself as prime minister, because of his relatively unifying profile. “He is identified with the LR. But he is not the most right-wing LR. He is a moderate. A notable. I would not be surprised if this hypothesis comes up again,” says the professor.

This scenario, moreover, would not be immune to a motion of censure in Parliament.

In the event of a deadlock, the option of a “technical” government appointed by the president could also be imposed, in which the prime minister would be a senior civil servant without party affiliation, a sort of consensual monk, responsible for managing current affairs until further notice.

“But what program would he govern on?” asks Simon Persico. Note that the concept has never yet been applied under the V^e Republic and that this is a short-term solution, because such a government does not have the legitimacy of the ballot box.

Experts agree on at least one thing: it is unlikely that this situation will be resolved before the start of the summer holidays, scheduled for August in France, but more likely in September, at the “back to school”…