President Emmanuel Macron threw French politics into disarray on Sunday by unexpectedly calling for snap elections.
This surprise decision came after the end of his party defeated by the far right in the European Parliament elections. Mr Macron dissolved the lower house of the French Parliament and declared that the first round of legislative elections would take place on June 30.
France now finds itself in unpredictable territory, with the future of Mr Macron’s second term potentially at stake. With less than a month to go before the vote, parties are now scrambling to field candidates, fine-tune their messages and, in some case, forge alliances.
Here’s what you need to know about the early elections.
What happened?
The French far-right anti-immigrant Rassemblement National party, led by Marine Le Pen and her very popular protégé, Jordan Bardellaclimbed to first place in elections to the European Parliament Sunday with about 31.4 percent of the vote. Mr. Macron’s centrist Renaissance party comes a distant second, with around 14.6 percent.
Mr. Macron acknowledged this crushing defeat in a televised broadcast to the nation that evening.
“France needs a clear majority to move forward in serenity and harmony,” Mr. Macron said, explaining why he had decided to call legislative elections.
This involved taking the extremely rare step of dissolving the 577-seat National Assembly, a presidential prerogative in France. Mr. Macron is the first president to do so since 1997.
Why did he do it?
When Mr. Macron was elected for a second term in 2022, his party failed to obtain an absolute majority. The centrist coalition he formed has since governed with a slim majority – but has struggled to pass some bills without opposition support.
Mr Macron was not obliged to dissolve Parliament, even if the European vote left him with a reduced figure with three years left in his presidential term. Analysts are still analyzing his motives, although many suspect he thought a dissolution had become inevitable — conservative lawmakers were threatening to overthrow his government in the fall. Shaking up the country with snap elections could also be a way for Mr Macron to prevent his opposition from organizing – and present voters with a stark choice between him or the far right.
The move is seen as a gamble: If the National Rally repeats its performance in national elections, France could become almost ungovernable, with Mr Macron facing a Parliament hostile to everything he believes in.
Ms Le Pen welcomed the announcement of the elections and said she was convinced that her party could muster a majority. “We are ready to turn the country around,” she told her enthusiastic supporters in Paris on Sunday evening.
What is at stake?
The presidency is the most powerful political office in France, with broad abilities to govern by decree. But approval from Parliament, and particularly the National Assembly, is required for most major domestic policy changes and key pieces of legislation, such as spending bills or bills. amendments to the Constitution.
Unlike the Senate, the other chamber of the French Parliament, the National Assembly is directly elected by the people and can overthrow a French cabinet through a vote of no confidence. It also has greater latitude to legislate and challenge the executive, and usually gets the final say if the two chambers disagree on a bill.
Mr. Macron’s party and its centrist allies currently hold 250 seats in the National Assembly, fewer than the 289 required for an absolute majority. The National Rally party holds 88 seats, while traditional conservative Republicans have 61. A tenuous alliance of far-left, socialist and Green lawmakers holds 149 seats. The remainder is held by smaller groups or lawmakers unaffiliated with any party.
How will the vote take place?
Elections for the 577 seats in the National Assembly will take place in two rounds: the first on June 30 and the second on July 7.
The 577 French electoral constituencies, one for each seat, cover the mainland, the overseas departments and territories, as well as French people living abroad. Unlike many of its European neighbors, France allocates seats to the candidates who obtain the most votes in each constituency, not based on a proportion of the total votes across the country.
This means that there will be 577 distinct elections, with local dynamics and particularities – unlike the European parliamentary elections where each party presented a single list of candidates nationally.
An unlimited number of candidates can compete in the first round in each constituency, but there are specific thresholds for reaching the second round. Although in most cases the runoff will feature the top two candidates with the highest number of votes, on rare occasions there may be three or even four candidates. Whoever wins the most votes during this second round wins the race. (Under certain conditions, a candidate who obtains more than 50 percent of the votes in the first round wins.)
What happens next?
As the elections have just been announced, there is no reliable opinion poll yet.
Despite its triumph in the European elections, it is unclear whether the National Rally can win a significantly higher number of seats in the lower house of the French Parliament.
“It is difficult to project the results of the European elections on those of the legislative ones,” said Luc Rouban, senior researcher at the Center for Political Research at Sciences Po in Paris. “It is not certain that the National Rally will achieve the same success.”
With little time to campaign, left-wing parties are scrambling to unite as they did in 2022 avoiding competing candidates in each constituency. But unity of the French left may be elusiveand it is unclear whether the parties will be able to reach such an agreement.
If Mr Macron fails to muster a strong parliamentary majority, he could find himself in a rare “cohabitation” scenario – in which the presidency and the National Assembly are on opposing political camps.
In this scenario, Mr Macron would be forced to choose a prime minister from a different political party – which could potentially block much of his national agenda. Foreign policy, which is a presidential prerogative, would theoretically remain virtually intact.
