France’s Macron to reshuffle government after huge win
PARIS — French President Emmanuel Macron is poised to rearrange his cabinet after his new centrist party engineered a landslide in the country’s parliamentary election, enabling the government to quickly start passing its first big laws.
Prime Minister Edouard Philippe resigned on Monday, a largely symbolic move required after a leg- islative election. He was immediately renamed to his job and is in charge of forming a government by Wednesday afternoon, the French presidency said in a statement.
Since Macron’s party, Republic on the Move!, won an absolute majority in the 577seat National Assembly, government spokesman Christophe Castaner said the reshuffle would be “technical and not farreaching.” He refused to say whether ministers who have come under suspicion of corruption would keep their jobs.
Macron’s plans were slightly delayed by an attempted attack Monday afternoon on security forces on Paris’s Champs-Elysees.
Republic on the Move! and its allies from the Modem party took 350 seats — far more than the 289 needed for a majority, according to Interior Ministry results.
Macron’s government is expected to pass its first set of measures during a special parliamentary session starting on June 27 — laws to strengthen security, improve ethics in politics and reform France’s restrictive labour laws.
The conservative Republicans and their allies are the main opposition group in parliament, winning 136 seats. The Socialist Party, which dominated the outgoing Assembly, was the main loser in Sunday’s vote, winning only 30 seats. Far-left leader Jean-Luc Melenchon’s party won 17 seats, over the minimum of 15 needed to form a group, a tool that provides extra funds and speaking time.
The far-right party National Front won eight seats — up from two in the outgoing Assembly — including one for its leader, Marine Le Pen.
Le Pen on Monday denounced an “antidemocratic voting system” that she said doesn’t represent the “real weight” of her party in the country. The National Front won 8.75 per cent of the votes nationwide, which is more than the Socialists and Melenchon’s far-left party, yet it has fewer seats.
Others agree that France’s current tworound voting system favours mainstream parties and their allies.