Rather than waking up to a country dominated by the far right, France woke up on Monday to Italy, where only painstaking negotiations in parliament could eventually produce a viable coalition government.
France voted no to Marine Le Pen’s anti-immigration National Rally party in parliamentary elections, another sign of deep-rooted resistance to nationalist adventures. France elected a resurgent left party to the top of the political ladder, but it came nowhere close to giving it power, and the center of national politics has shifted from an all-powerful president to parliament.
With the Paris Olympics due to open in three weeks and the August exodus to the sea and mountains a sacred part of French life, talks to form a government could drag on into the autumn when the government is needed to pass a budget after elections that could have sparked violence led to a deadlock.
The re-emerged New Popular Front, a left-wing coalition, won around 180 seats in the National Assembly to become the largest party, and has called on President Emmanuel Macron to immediately ask him to form a government, stating that it will announce its candidate for prime minister within the next week.
This demand ignores several points: Under the constitution, Macron chooses the prime minister; the New Popular Front is 100 seats short of a majority in the 577-seat National Assembly; and the New Popular Front won all of its seats not because of the left-wing coalition’s platform, but because of that platform combined with the decision of centrist and left-wing factions to form a “Republican Front” to oppose the National Rally in the second round of voting.
Nevertheless, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, leader of the Militant Left, said he has no intention of negotiating with potential coalition partners and will not change a single sentence of the Left’s platform.
None of this bodes well for clearing the thick fog that has hung over Paris following Macron’s sudden “clarification” election.
Presidential France has no culture of compromise and coalition-building. “We don’t know anything about it. We are a country of wannabe Napoleons,” says political scientist Nicole Bacaran.
The Napoleons will now have to endure the painstaking details of negotiating an agreed agenda between parties with vastly different views on the country’s priorities.
For example, the New Popular Front wants to lower the retirement age from 64 to 60, a year after Mr Macron raised it from 62 to 64 after a hard-fought election. While Mr Macron wants to make reducing the budget deficit a priority, the New Popular Front wants to raise the minimum wage and freeze energy and gas prices. Earlier this year, Macron’s government passed an immigration bill that tightens rules allowing foreigners to work, live and study in France. The left has promised to make the asylum process more lenient.
With the National Assembly split into three major factions – left, centre and right – the grounds for forming an effective coalition government were not immediately in place.
Macron’s centrist coalition fell from 250 to about 160 lawmakers, while the Rally National and its allies rose from 89 to about 140. France once again kept the far-right out of power, but that did not stop their rise, fueled by anger over immigrants and the rising cost of living.
After meeting with Prime Minister Gabriel Attal on Monday, Macron said he had asked him to stay on in his role “for the time being” to “ensure stability in the country”. Attal, once one of Macron’s favourites, had announced his intention to resign.
Attal appears set to break with Macron and join the race to succeed him in 2027. “The dissolution of the National Assembly was not my choice,” he said pointedly in a speech on Sunday night. “Tonight, a new era begins. From tomorrow, at the wish of the French people, the centre of power will be more in the hands of Parliament than ever before.”
It is hard to imagine a more direct condemnation of Macron’s highly personalist, top-down style of politics and his disdain for the National Assembly, especially from one of his former students.
Macron, who is term-limited and must step down in 2027, has been largely silent in recent days, which is uncharacteristic. Although his party lost a third of its seats, the election was not as devastating for him as was widely expected. He avoided humiliation, showing that a landslide victory for the National Rally in the European Parliament does not necessarily translate to the same results in national elections. This is no small thing.
He is expected to take time to discuss the various centrist parties in the newly enlarged coalition and explore the possibility of forming a coalition. The Elysee Palace has called for calm.
The president has two red lines: either forming a government with the National Rally, led by Jordan Bardella, a young leader who had hoped to become prime minister, or with the far-left Indefatigable France, led by Mélenchon, whose party Macron accuses of anti-Semitism. Macron will likely try to persuade the moderate left, including the Socialist Party and the Greens, and mainstream conservatives to join him in a coalition government.
Macron will travel to Washington on Wednesday for a NATO summit, a move that will show his authority on the international stage – traditionally the exclusive domain of French presidents – remains undiminished and that France’s commitment to supporting Ukraine remains unwavering amid widespread political instability in the United States.
If Biden’s health is the talk of Washington, Macron’s way of wielding power is the talk of Paris. Will Attal’s “new era” centered on parliament force Macron to change course?
“Today we put an end to the Jovian phase of the Fifth Republic,” said prominent socialist Raphael Glucksmann.
Before he became president in 2016, Macron used the word “Jupiter” to describe his own attitude to politics. He believed a strongman with godlike authority would be more appealing to the French than the “ordinary” presidency of François Hollande. The French, he suggested, liked the mystique of great authority.
To some extent, this appears to be the case, judging by the evidence from Macron’s seven years of rule.
“We are in a divided parliament, so we have to act like adults,” said Glucksmann, who led the Socialist Party’s successful campaign in last month’s European elections. “That means we have to talk, we have to dialogue and we have to accept that the National Assembly will be the centre of power.”
He described this as a “fundamental shift in political culture.”
An unyielding France would hold an estimated 75 of the 180 seats in the National Assembly for the New Popular Front, around 65 for the Socialists, around 33 for the Greens and fewer than 10 for the Communists. As Glucksmann’s comments suggest, the coalition would be hard to maintain.
In theory, as a moderate accustomed to forming coalitions in the European Parliament, Glucksmann could be a potential prime minister in a coalition made up of the Socialists, the Greens, the Communists, Macron’s centrist bloc and about 60 mainstream conservative lawmakers from the Republican Party.
But of course, Glucksmann’s approach and beliefs clash with Mélenchon, who refuses to engage in dialogue with potential partners, and also with Macron.
There is no sign of compromise, at least for now.
Even as the Olympic torch is set to arrive in the French capital on Bastille Day, July 14, which marks the anniversary of the French Revolution and the beheading of the King, emerging from France’s post-election turmoil will not be easy.
