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France seeks way out of political ‘fog’ after far-right defeat

President Emmanuel Macron on Monday was to start efforts to extract France from its most severe political uncertainty in decades after the left defeated the far right in elections with no group winning an absolute majority.

Published: 8 July 2024 08:50 CEST

France seeks way out of political 'fog' after far-right defeat

France's President Emmanuel Macron is now faced with a divided parliament in which no party has a majority. Photo by Ludovic MARIN / AFP

The outcome of the legislative elections, called by Macron three years ahead of schedule in a bid to reshape the political landscape, leaves France without any clear path to forming a new government.

The final result saw the left alliance Nouveau Front Populaire in first place, followed by Macron’s centrists and Marine Le Pen’s far-right in third. However no group has enough seats to form a majority in parliament.

Find the latest on the results here.

Listen to the team at The Local France discuss the latest election results in a special episode of the Talking France podcast. Download here or listen on the link below

Prime Minister Gabriel Attal is due to submit his resignation to Macron on Monday but has also made clear he is ready to stay on in a caretaker capacity as weeks of political uncertainty loom.

The left is emerging as the biggest group in the new parliament but has yet to even agree on a figure who it would want to be the new prime minister.

The unprecedented situation is taking shape just as Macron is due to be out of the country for most of the week, taking part in the NATO summit in Washington.

“Is this the biggest crisis of the Fifth Republic [ie since 1958]?” asked Gael Sliman, president of the Odoxa polling group.

“Emmanuel Macron wanted clarification with the dissolution, now we are in total uncertainty. A very thick fog.”

After winning the June 30th first round by a clear margin, the results were a major disappointment for the far-right Rassemblement National (RN) of Marine Le Pen, even if her forces are set to boast about their biggest ever contingent in parliament.

Macron’s centrist alliance will have dozens fewer members of parliament, but held up better than expected and could even end in second.

The left-wing Nouveau Front Populaire (NFP) — formed last month after Macron called snap elections — brought together the centre-left Parti Socialiste, Greens, Communists and the hard-left La France Insoumise (LFI) in one camp.

The final results, released on Monday morning by the Interior ministry show the NFP in the lead with 182 seats, followed by Macron’s centrists on 168, the RN in third on 143 and the centre-right Les Républicains in fourth with 45 seats.

That means no group scored the 289 seats needed for an absolute majority and it remains unclear how a new government could be formed.

Macron, who has yet to speak in public about the projections, is calling for “prudence and analysis of the results”, said an aide, asking not to be named.

LFI lawmaker Clementine Autain called on the NFP alliance to gather on Monday to decide on a suitable candidate for prime minister.

In key individual battles, Le Pen’s sister Marie-Caroline narrowly lost out on being a lawmaker, but former president François Hollande will return to frontline politics as a Socialist member of parliament.

Firebrand leftist Jean-Luc Mélenchon, leader of LFI and the controversial figurehead of the NFP coalition, demanded that the left be allowed to form a government.

Only one week ago, some polls had indicated the RN could win an absolute majority with Le Pen’s 28-year-old lieutenant Jordan Bardella becoming prime minister.

Instead, he expressed fury.

Bardella dubbed the local electoral pacts that saw the left and centrists avoid splitting the anti-RN vote as an “alliance of dishonour”.

He said it had thrown “France into the arms of Jean-Luc Melenchon’s extreme left”.

Le Pen, who wants to launch a fourth bid for the presidency in 2027, declared: “The tide is rising. It did not rise high enough this time, but it continues to rise and, consequently, our victory has only been delayed.”

The first round saw more than 200 tactical-voting pacts between centre and left-wing candidates in seats to attempt to prevent the RN winning an absolute majority.

This has been hailed as a return of the anti-far right “Republican Front” first summoned when Le Pen’s father Jean-Marie faced Jacques Chirac in the run-off of 2002 presidential elections.

The question for France now is if this alliance of last resort can support a stable government, dogged by a still substantial RN bloc in parliament led by Le Pen herself as she prepares a 2027 presidential bid.

Risk analysis firm Eurasia Group said there was “no obvious governing majority” in the new parliament.

“It may take many weeks to resolve the muddle while the present government manages current business.”

Follow all the latest election news from France HERE

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'Serious political crisis': Anger grows in France over Macron's dithering

Never in the history of the Fifth Republic — which began with constitutional reform in 1958 — has France gone so long without a permanent government, leaving the previous administration led by Prime Minister Gabriel Attal in place as caretakers.

A left-wing coalition emerged from the election as the biggest political force but with nowhere near enough seats for an overall majority, while Macron’s centrist faction and the far-right make up the two other major groups in the National Assembly.

To the fury of the Nouveau Front Populaire (NFP) coalition, Macron earlier this week rejected their choice of economist and civil servant Lucie Castets, 37, to become premier, arguing a left-wing government would be a “threat to institutional stability”.

Macron insisted during a Thursday visit to Serbia that he was making “every effort” to “achieve the best solution for the country”.

“I will speak to the French people in due time and within the right framework,” he said.

‘Serious political crisis’

Macron’s task is to find a prime minister with whom he can work but who above all can find enough support in the National Assembly to escape swift ejection by a no-confidence motion.

Despite the lack of signs of progress in public, attention is crystallising on one possible “back to the future” option.

Former Socialist Party grandee Bernard Cazeneuve, 61, could return to the job of prime minister which he held for less than half a year under the presidency of Francois Hollande from 2016-2017.

He is better known for his much longer stint as interior minister under Hollande, which encompassed the radical Islamist attacks on Paris in November 2015.

But Cazeneuve receives far from whole-hearted support even on the left, where some in the Socialist Party (PS) regard him with suspicion for leaving when it first struck an alliance with hard-left La France Insoumise (LFI) — a party which in turn sees the ex-PM as too centrist.

Another option could be the Socialist mayor of the Paris suburb of Saint-Ouen, Karim Bouamrane, 51, who has said he would consider taking the job if asked. Bouamrane is widely admired for seeking to tackle inequality and insecurity in the low-income district.

The stalemate has ground on first through the Olympics and now the Paralympics, with Macron showing he is in no rush to resolve the situation.

“We are in the most serious political crisis in the history of the Fifth Republic,” Jerome Jaffre, a political scientist at the Sciences Po university, told AFP.

France has been “without a majority, without a government for forty days,” he said, marking the longest period of so-called caretaker rule since the end of World War II.

‘Rubik’s cube’

Macron’s move to block Castets even seeking to lead a government provoked immediate outrage from the left, with Green Party chief Marine Tondelier accusing the president of stealing the election outcome.

National coordinator for the hard-left La France Insoumise (LFI), Manuel Bompard, said the decision was an “unacceptable anti-democratic coup”, and LFI leader Jean-Luc Melanchon called for Macron’s impeachment.

Some leftist leaders are urging for popular demonstrations on September 7, although this move has alarmed some Socialists and led to strains within the NFP.

France is in a “void with no precedents or clear rules about what should happen next,” said Mujtaba Rahman, managing director for Europe at the Eurasia Group consultancy.

The president was “confronted with a parliamentary Rubik’s cube without an obvious solution,” said Rahman.

October 1 is the legal deadline by which a government must present a draft budget law for 2025.

The president has a constitutional duty to “ensure” the government functions, said public law professor Dominique Rousseau.

“He’s not going to appoint a government that we know will be overthrown within 48 hours,” he added.

For constitutional scholar Dominique Chagnollaud, Macron has backed himself into a corner, creating “unprecedented constitutional confusion”.

The logical choice is to appoint a leader from the group that “came out on top,” said Chagnollaud. “In most democracies, that’s how it works. If that doesn’t work, we try a second solution, and so on.”

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