French President Macron’s decision to dissolve the National Assembly on June 9 and call for legislative elections on June 30 and July 7 shows that Macron is trying to position the Rassemblement National (RN) as his only potential opponent. But it also shows that Macron misjudged left-wing parties and wrongly bet on their alleged inability to build strong political coalitions and agree on a common political agenda. But the aftermath of this historic day proved that Macron’s bet was wrong.
Macron surprised the French people by announcing the dissolution of the National Assembly after his crushing defeat in the European elections. His decision came after far-right Marine Le Pen received almost twice as many votes as Macron’s centre-right party in national rallies (37% vs 14.6%). There is nothing in electoral law or the French constitution that requires the French president to make this decision. Dissolving the National Assembly is a discretionary power provided in the constitution to allow the president to resolve an institutional crisis or overcome a deadlock in which the government is unable to obtain the approval of the National Assembly for major reforms. But in France’s current politics, this is not the case.
As opinion polls and the media show, the arrival of snap legislative elections plunges the country into a political abyss and a state of democratic anxiety. From political analysts to some of his former political allies, the French public is still trying to understand whether Macron’s decision to gamble was driven by improvisation or pure narcissism, what his true intentions were, and whether he was acutely aware of it. consequences of actions. Although Macron reiterated that the European elections have nothing to do with French domestic politics, he insisted that such results showed that the country needed clarification. But what is certain is that calls for legislative elections have opened a window of opportunity for Marine Le Pen’s party to win a majority in the National Assembly and her president, Jordan Bardera, after the national rally triumphed in the European elections. Communist Party and was appointed prime minister.
In response to the nationalist threat, left-wing parties are not standing still despite Macron’s political calculations. Building on the success of the Socialist Party candidate Raphaël Glucksmann, a pro-European and pro-Ukrainian politician, who won the European elections with 14% In third place on the ballot, the Green Party, the Communist Party and the far-left French Insoumise party joined forces to create the New Popular Front. The creation of this left-wing alliance has not been immune to severe criticism, as public opinion and the media pointed to the use of extremist and anti-Semitic rhetoric by some members of the French Boussumis organization following the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7. Likewise, Macronists did not miss the opportunity to demonstrate the contradictions between the different views expressed by members of the New Popular Front, describing this codification as unnatural. However, the New Popular Front reached consensus on resolving the main points of friction. It includes a fight against anti-Semitism while pledging to recognize a Palestinian state, end brutal political debate, raise the minimum wage and reverse Macron’s unpopular pension reforms. In addition, the New Popular Front has completely distanced itself from Le Pen’s party through international political measures including strong support for the European Union and providing military assistance to Ukraine. The same goes for strengthening public media and public services such as La Poste, which the country has rallied to pledge to privatize.
Le Pen’s party won the first round of legislative elections on Sunday, June 30, with 33.15% of the vote, but her party’s chances of winning an outright majority are not guaranteed. However, President Macron’s camp embarrassingly finished in third place (20.04%), surpassed by the Popular Front with 27.99% of the vote. Therefore, the chances of Jordan Bardella or another member of the National Rally becoming Prime Minister are high. If so, it would be the first co-government in French history to include members of the far right. Cohabitation is the term used in France to describe a dual executive government in which the president and prime minister come from opposing parties of the left and right. The most recent cohabitation in France occurred between 1997 and 2002, between President Jacques Chirac and Prime Minister Lionel Jospin. However, preventing the far right from gaining executive power is not only a traditional practice, it is almost a matter of political morality for many French citizens. This approach, often referred to as the Republican Front, has its roots in the so-called Popular Front formed in 1936 by a left-wing alliance led by Léon Blum to fight the fascist threat. The political and left-wing parties are systematically united and only one candidate in the run-off will prevent the far-right parties from coming to power. It was the Republican Front built against Marine Le Pen in 2017 and 2022 that led to Macron’s election and re-election. However, the risk that the Republican front will not materialize in these legislative elections is high, as Marine Le Pen has gradually succeeded in “de-demonizing” her nationalist party.
Since she first ran for president in 2012, Marine Le Pen has carried out pseudo-purges of members of far-right groups at rallies across the country and marginalized anti-Semitic and homophobic rhetoric from the party’s official discourse. While maintaining a degree of skepticism about the EU, national rallies have abandoned the idea of leaving the EU and the eurozone. Yet Le Pen’s ties to Russia leave significant drawbacks for her commitment to a stronger EU and to the humanistic values on which France’s democratic tradition rests. From the loans the National Front received from Russian banks to its refusal to support European military aid to Ukraine and its ambiguous position on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the National Front’s controversial stance on international affairs threatens to bring about major changes in the elements of its survival. change. More recently, Lon Pen has questioned the authority of the French president as commander-in-chief of the army, while emphasizing the role of the prime minister in defence. France is therefore a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council and a nuclear power, so the possibility of a Le Penist party gaining executive power is an issue with global implications.
However, the National Rally Party has succeeded in building a populist agenda that exploits people’s real or perceived grievances and portrays them as the responsibility of the EU and Paris’ political elites. Le Pen’s pledge to build economic patriotism and national sovereignty against the EU parallels Bardera’s commitment to domestic politics. They involve strengthening the authority of schools and developing the principle of national priority to reduce immigration and give French nationals rights not only over foreigners but also over French dual nationals. It is therefore not surprising that the prospect of Le Pen’s party winning legislative races fuels hate speech and verbal violence.
While Macron and his de facto prime minister, Gabriel Attal, hailed the election as a moment of clarity, they failed to embody a vision of national reconciliation. On the contrary, Macron’s Ennahda party has woven a fear-based political rhetoric into this legislative campaign. Macronism, borrowing de Gaulle’s slogan “It’s me or chaos”, systematically portrayed the National Assembly and the New Popular Front as political extremes that could spark civil war in the two weeks before the first round of voting. Since the political program of the national rally violates France’s political system and values such as the equality of citizens, it actually falls within the category of extremism. But the same cannot be said for the New Popular Front. For some political analysts, the New Popular Front, only two weeks old, is already generating hope and truly rallying the political will of left-wing voters. The defeat of Marcionism in the first round of legislative elections showed that fear and economic reasons were not strong arguments for regaining the support of French voters. The political program of the New Popular Front integrated social justice and civil equality, and reconciled agricultural and political ecologies. While resolving the internal contradictions of a major international conflict, a new Popular Front may well be the only option that can inspire French voters to rekindle their attachment to the Republican Front and European construction.
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