Conservatives block Macron pact
Les Republicains’ move blow to French leader
Emmanuel Macron suffered a fresh blow after losing his ruling majority in parliamentary elections as French conservatives ruled out a coalition deal with the weakened president.
Les Republicains, the 61 Mp-strong traditional party of the French right, were seen as the likeliest allies to restore Macron’s majority, which he lost after strong performances from the hard-left and hard-right.
“There is no question of either a pact, or a coalition, or an agreement of any form whatsoever,” Christian Jacob, the Republicains leader, said yesterday.
His party was “in opposition to the Government and Emmanuel Macron”, he told reporters.
Macron’s Ensemble coalition remains the largest in the National Assembly, with 245 seats but is 45 seats short of the 289 needed for a majority.
The hung parliament, very unusual in France, means the last five years of Macron ruling alone are over.
He will be forced to find a coalition partner or run a minority government striking bargains with MPS on bills to salvage his reforms to welfare benefits, pensions and tax.
“My biggest fear is that the country will be blocked,” Olivia Gre´ goire, a government spokesperson, said, as France faced the prospect of months of political stalemate.
France will no longer be ruled as the “minority president” wishes, Marine Le Pen said yesterday after leading her hard-right party to its strongest ever results in parliamentary elections. Le Pen declared Macron’s plan to raise the retirement age from 62 to 65 “buried” after the “seismic” vote.
She announced she would step down from the presidency of her party to devote herself to frustrating
Macron’s reforms. “The country is not ungovernable, but it’s not going to be governed the way Emmanuel Macron wanted,” Le Pen said, two months after he defeated her in April’s presidential elections. “Macron is a minority president now,” she said in Heninbeaumont, her stronghold in northern France. “It’s a historic victory.”
National Rally is now the strongest single opposition party with 89 seats, up from eight in the outgoing chamber and more than double what polls had predicted.
Jean-luc Melenchon, the hard-left firebrand, led the NUPES coalition of France Unbowed, the Socialists, Greens and Communists to 131 seats. “The rout of the presidential party is total,” said Melenchon, who came third in the presidential elections and wants to be made prime minister in a power-sharing agreement with Macron.
The leftist said he would bring a motion of no confidence against Macron’s Prime Minister, E´ lisabeth Borne, as soon as parliament convenes in July. Borne is seen as vulnerable as Macron faces a new Cabinet shakeup after several of his top allies lost their seats. His health and environment ministers lost their seats and by tradition will have to resign, as did the parliament speaker and the head of Macron’s parliament group.
But there were signs of divisions within the NUPES alliance after rejection of Melenchon’s call to turn the coalition into a single opposition group in the parliament.
— Telegraph Group Ltd