France entered a zone of political turbulence on Sunday evening after the disavowal inflicted on President Emmanuel Macron, who lost his absolute majority in the National Assembly at the end of the second round of the legislative elections, while the far right made an arrival in strength.
The president, re-elected in April for a second term, will have to find alliances to implement his reform program over the next five years in the face of opposition determined not to give him any favors.
Which could, according to observers, plunge France, unaccustomed to parliamentary compromises, unlike its European partners, into chronic political instability.
“It will be much more difficult to govern, especially if there is an alliance of all the oppositions,” Dominique Rousseau, professor of constitutional law at the Panthéon-Sorbonne University, told Agence France-Presse (AFP). He underlined that “the role of the Parliament will be rehabilitated”, like what is happening in “all the other European countries”.
It will be much more difficult to govern, especially if there is an alliance of all oppositions
“We will work tomorrow to build a majority of action, there is no alternative”, assured the Prime Minister, Élisabeth Borne, herself elected shortly in Normandy, affirming that this “unprecedented situation constitutes a risk for our country.
France will not be “ungovernable”, but it “will have to show a lot of imagination”, conceded the Minister of the Economy, Bruno Le Maire, while the Minister of Public Accounts, Gabriel Attal, a close friend of the president, recognized that they would have to “go beyond [leurs] certainties, [leurs] cleavages”.
“Slap”
For the presidential majority, the election night took the form of a “slap in the face”, as the newspaper described it. Release, despite the fact that the presidential coalition Together! came out on top with 246 seats.
For its part, the left alliance Nupes led by Jean-Luc Mélenchon obtained 142 seats, and became the first opposition force in the Assembly, instead of the right. For the united left – a first for decades – it is a victory with a slight bitter taste since it fails to impose cohabitation on President Macron as it had predicted.
But the tribune Jean-Luc Mélenchon nevertheless spoke of “rout of the presidential party”, welcoming the “great upsurge” of the left.
In the home stretch, Emmanuel Macron had dramatized the issue and called on the French to give him a “solid majority”. The latter seem not to have heard him, preferring to grant him only a relative majority.
Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally (RN) party won 89 deputies, which represents a tremendous breakthrough.
Mme Le Pen, herself largely re-elected on Sunday evening, promised to embody a “firm” opposition, “without collusion”, but “responsible and respectful” of the institutions. “It’s a ‘Navy blue’ wave all over the country,” rejoiced the party’s acting president, Jordan Bardella, going so far as to speak of a “tsunami”.
The formation of Marine Le Pen crosses the threshold necessary to form a group in the lower house of Parliament, a first for more than 35 years.
As for the classic right (LR), it saves the furniture by claiming 69 deputies, and could find itself in the position of arbiter in the future Assembly, even if it loses its status as the first opposition group.
One of its leaders, Jean-François Copé, called Sunday evening for a pact in the face of “extreme” between his party and the majority.
Ministers beaten
Unsurprisingly, this election, on 4e in two months after the presidential election, was shunned by the French on a Sunday when part of the country suffered an unprecedented heat wave.
At the time these lines were written, polling institutes predicted an abstention rate between 53.5% and 54%, without breaking the 2017 record (57.36%).
This election completes a long electoral cycle, which will have confirmed a vast political recomposition in France around three blocs, to the detriment of the traditional parties of right and left, started with the election of Mr. Macron in 2017.
The French will have gone to the polls no less than four times in two years, in a context of successive crises, from the COVID-19 pandemic to the war in Ukraine, including rising inflation and threats to the economy.
With the political pole of the AFP