On Sunday night, joy: French voters had, once again, kept the far right out of power. On Monday morning, uncertainty: A hung parliament, shaky alliances and the threat of turbulent years ahead. <\/p>\n
President Emmanuel Macron called France\u2019s snap parliamentary election to \u201cclarify\u201d the political situation. But after the shock second-round results, the waters are more muddied than they have been in decades. <\/p>\n
While a surge in support for the left-wing New Popular Front (NFP) coalition foiled Marine Le Pen\u2019s far-right National Rally (RN) party, French politics is now more disordered than it was before the vote. <\/p>\n
So, what did we learn last night, who might be France\u2019s next prime minister, and has Macron\u2019s gamble \u201cpaid off?\u201d <\/p>\n
After leading the first round of voting last Sunday, the RN was closer to the gates of power than ever before, and was on the cusp of forming France\u2019s first far-right government since the collaborationist Vichy regime of World War II. <\/p>\n
But after a week of political bargaining, in which more than 200 left-wing and centrist candidates withdrew from the second round in a bid to avoid splitting the vote, the NFP \u2013 a cluster of several parties from the extreme left to the more moderate \u2013 emerged with the most seats in the decisive second round. <\/p>\n
The NFP won 182 seats in the National Assembly, making it the largest group in the 577-seat parliament. Macron\u2019s centrist Ensemble alliance, which trailed in a distant third in the first round, mounted a strong recovery to win 163 seats. And the RN and its allies, despite leading the first round, won 143 seats. <\/p>\n
Does that mean the NFP \u201cwon\u201d the election? Not quite. Although the coalition has the most seats, it fell well short of the 289 seats required for an absolute majority, meaning France now has a hung parliament. If this was a victory for anything, it was the \u201ccordon sanitaire,\u201d the principle that mainstream parties must unite to prevent the extreme right from taking office. <\/p>\n
It was meant to be a coronation. Crowds of supporters had crammed into election night events at the RN party HQ in Paris and at outposts all over the country, to watch the moment many felt had been decades in the making: Confirmation that their party, and its long-taboo brand of anti-immigrant politics, had won the most seats in the French parliament. <\/p>\n
That wasn\u2019t to be. The fervent atmosphere soured as supporters saw the RN had slumped to third place. Jordan Bardella, the 28-year-old leader handpicked by Le Pen to freshen the party\u2019s image and purge it of its racist and antisemitic roots, was dyspeptic. He railed against the \u201cdangerous electoral deals\u201d made between the NFP and Ensemble which had \u201cdeprived the French people\u201d of an RN-led government. <\/p>\n
\u201cBy deciding to deliberately paralyze our institutions, Emmanuel Macron has now pushed the country towards uncertainty and instability,\u201d Bardella said, dismissing the NFP as an \u201calliance of dishonor.\u201d <\/p>\n
Still, the RN\u2019s success should not be underestimated. In the 2017 elections, when Macron swept to power, the RN won just eight seats. In 2022, it surged to 89 seats. In Sunday\u2019s vote, it won 125 \u2013 making it the largest individual party. That unity means it will likely remain a potent force in the next parliament, while the solidity of the leftist coalition remains untested. <\/p>\n
A month ago, the NFP did not exist. Now, it is the largest bloc in the French parliament and could provide France with its next prime minister. It chose its name in an attempt to resurrect the original Popular Front that blocked the far right from gaining power in 1936. Sunday\u2019s results mean it has done so again. <\/p>\n
But while it achieved its founding purpose, it is unclear whether this capacious \u2013 and potential fractious \u2013 coalition will hold. The hastily assembled bloc comprises several parties: the far-left France Unbowed party; the Socialists; the green Ecologists; the center-left Place Publique and others. <\/p>\n
This many-headed hydra does not speak with a single voice. Each party celebrated the results at their own campaign events, rather than together. Two of its most prominent figures \u2013 Jean-Luc M\u00e9lenchon, the populist France Unbowed leader, and Raphael Glucksmann, the more moderate leader of Place Publique \u2013 are barely on speaking terms. <\/p>\n
Disagreements over economic and foreign policies could spill over, as the NFP\u2019s expansive spending plans \u2013 which include raising the minimum wage, capping the price of certain foods and energy and scrapping Macron\u2019s pension reforms \u2013 collide with the European Union\u2019s restrictive fiscal rules and France\u2019s need to rein in its ballooning deficit. <\/p>\n
Macron once said his thoughts are \u201ctoo complex\u201d for journalists. Still, his decision to call a snap election \u2013 three years earlier than necessary, and with his party way behind in the polls \u2013 baffled the sharpest of political analysts, caught even his closest allies off guard and left many French voters confused. <\/p>\n
He called the vote minutes after his party was trounced by the RN in last month\u2019s European Parliament elections. Although European results need have no bearing on domestic politics, Macron said he could not ignore the message sent to him by voters and wanted to clarify the situation. <\/p>\n
But Sunday\u2019s results suggest he has achieved the opposite. \u00c9duoard Philippe, France\u2019s former prime minister and an ally of Macron, said what was \u201cintended as a clarification has instead led to great vagueness.\u201d Although Macron\u2019s party recovered from the first round, it lost around 100 seats compared to the 2022 election. <\/p>\n
Macron\u2019s first decision is to appoint a new prime minister. He has already delayed this process by declining Gabriel Attal\u2019s resignation, asking him to stay in office for now. <\/p>\n
Typically, the French president appoints a prime minister from the largest bloc in parliament. But it is unclear from which party within the NFP this will be. M\u00e9lenchon\u2019s party won the most seats within the NFP, but Macron\u2019s allies have repeatedly refused to work with France Unbowed, saying it is just as extreme \u2013 and therefore as unfit to govern \u2013 as the RN. <\/p>\n
In order to reach the majority needed to pass laws, the NFP will likely have to enter into alliances with Ensemble \u2013 as two coalitions enter an even larger coalition, straddling vast ideological ground. Finding common ground will be a fraught task, meaning gridlock is likely. Without a clear majority, a minority government faces the risk of no-confidence votes as soon as this month, which could lead to several governments replacing each other. <\/p>\n
One way out could be a \u201ctechnocratic\u201d government, which would involve Macron appointing ministers with no party affiliation to manage day-to-day matters. But these can come to seem undemocratic and can further fan the flames of populism. Just look at Italy: after the premiership of Mario Draghi, the technocrat par excellence<\/em>, the country elected its most far-right government since Benito Mussolini. While France avoided a far-right government for now, the RN threat is likely to remain strong. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" On Sunday night, joy: French voters had, once again, kept the far right out of power. On Monday morning, uncertainty: A hung parliament, shaky alliances and the threat of turbulent years ahead. President Emmanuel Macron called France\u2019s snap parliamentary election to \u201cclarify\u201d the political situation. But after the shock second-round results, the waters are more <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4794,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-4793","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4793","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4793"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4793\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4794"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4793"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4793"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4793"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}