Instead of waking up on Monday to a country dominated by the far right, France woke up to become Italy, a country where only laborious parliamentary negotiations can possibly produce a viable coalition government.
France said no to Marine Le Pen’s anti-immigrant National Rally in the legislative elections, a new demonstration of its deep resistance to nationalist adventures. It elected a resurgent left to a first place that was not enough to give it power, and it shifted the political heart of the country from an all-powerful presidency to parliament.
With the Paris Olympics set to open in less than three weeks and the exodus to the beaches or mountains in August a hallowed part of French life, negotiations to form a government could stretch into the fall, when France will need a government to pass a budget. Elections that could have sparked an uprising have ended in a stalemate.
THE New Popular FrontA resurgent if fractious left-wing alliance came out on top with about 180 seats in the National Assembly and immediately demanded that President Emmanuel Macron ask it to form a government, saying it would present its choice for prime minister next week.
This request ignores several factors. Under the constitution, Mr. Macron chooses the prime minister. In the 577-seat National Assembly, the New Popular Front is about 100 seats short of a viable majority. It was not the left-wing alliance’s program that won it all its seats, but a combination of that program and the decision of the centrists and the left to form a unified “republican front” against the National Rally in the second round.
Despite this, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the combative leader of the left, has declared that he will not negotiate with potential coalition partners, nor change a single sentence of the left’s program.
None of this bodes well for dispelling the thick fog that has shrouded Paris since Mr Macron’s snap “clarifying” election.
France, with its presidential system, has no culture of compromise to build a coalition. “We don’t know anything about it, we are a nation of so-called Napoleons,” explains Nicole Bacharan, a political scientist.
The Napoleons will now have to confront the details of a laborious negotiation over an agenda agreed between parties with widely divergent views on national 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 bitter struggle. 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. Mr. Macron’s government passed an immigration bill earlier this year that tightens rules for foreigners to work, live, and study in France. The left has pledged to make the asylum process more generous.
The division of the National Assembly into three large blocs of left, centre and right offered no immediate basis for a functioning coalition.
Mr Macron’s centrist bloc has about 160 MPs, down from 250, and the National Rally and its allies have about 140, down from 89. France has kept the far right out of power once again, but it has not stopped its rise, fuelled by anger over immigration and the rising cost of living.
Mr Macron, following a meeting on Monday with Prime Minister Gabriel Attal, said he had asked him to remain in office “for the time being” in order to “ensure the stability of the country”. Mr Attal, once a favourite of Mr Macronhad offered his resignation.
Mr. Attal has broken away from Mr. Macron, with the apparent intention of launching himself into the race to succeed him in 2027. In a scathing speech on Sunday evening, he declared: “I did not choose this dissolution” of the National Assembly. He continued: “Tonight, a new era begins. From tomorrow, the center of gravity of power will be, by the will of the French people, more than ever in the hands of Parliament.”
It was hard to imagine a more direct rebuke of Mr Macron for his highly personalised and authoritarian style of government, generally dismissive of the National Assembly, especially from a former disciple.
Macron, who is term-limited and due to step down in 2027, has been largely silent in recent days, which is unusual. Although his party lost a third of its seats, the election was not the debacle he expected. He escaped humiliation; he demonstrated that a landslide victory for the National Rally in the European Parliament would not inevitably lead to the same in a national election. That is no small feat.
He should now take his time to consult the different parties of a broader centre in order to explore the possibilities of a coalition. “Calm” was the order of the day from the Élysée, seat of the presidency.
The president has two red lines to follow: governing with the National Rally, whose young leader Jordan Bardella had hoped to become prime minister, and with France Insoumise, Mr. Mélenchon’s far-left party, which Mr. Macron has accused of anti-Semitism. He will try to convince the moderate left, including the Socialists and the Greens, as well as traditional conservatives, to join a coalition.
On Wednesday, Mr. Macron will be in Washington for the NATO summit. It will be a way to demonstrate that his authority on the international stage, traditionally reserved for French presidents, is not diminished and that French commitment to supporting Ukraine will not waver at a time when France is facing an economic and political crisis. American political uncertainty is omnipresent.
If Mr Biden’s health is much talked about in Washington, the way Mr Macron exercises power is much talked about in Paris. Will he now have to correct course for Mr Attal’s “new era” centered on Parliament?
“Today,” declared Raphaël Glucksmann, a prominent socialist, “we are putting an end to the Jupiter phase of the Fifth Republic.”
In 2016, before he became president, Macron used the term “Jupiterian” to describe his approach to governing. A powerful man with near-godlike authority was more appealing to the French, he argued, than the “normal” presidency of François Hollande. The French, he suggested, are fond of the mysteries of great authority.
To a certain extent, it seems, given Mr Macron’s seven years in power.
“We are in a divided assembly, so we have to behave like adults,” said Mr Glucksmann, who successfully led the Socialist Party’s campaign for last month’s European elections. “That means we will have to talk, dialogue and accept that the National Assembly becomes the heart of power.”
He described it as “a fundamental change in political culture.”
La France Insoumise holds about 75 of the New Popular Front’s 180 seats, the Socialists about 65, the Greens about 33 and the Communists less than 10. Maintaining the alliance will be difficult, as Mr Glucksmann’s comments illustrated.
In theory, as a moderate accustomed to building coalitions in the European Parliament, Mr Glucksmann could run for prime minister in a coalition including the Socialists, the Greens, the Communists, Mr Macron’s centrist bloc and about 60 traditional conservative MPs from Les Républicains.
But of course, Mr Glucksmann’s approach and beliefs conflict with those of Mr Mélenchon, who refuses dialogue with potential partners, and they also conflict with those of Mr Macron.
Compromise is not in the air, at least not yet.
There is no easy way out of France’s post-election fog, even though the Olympic flame is set to arrive in the French capital on July 14, Bastille Day, when France will commemorate its Revolution and the beheading of its monarch.
