Macron must win more polls before he can govern
He needs a majority of seats in the National Assembly to implement plans
Emmanuel Macron may have won the French presidency but that may prove to be the easiest part of his political campaign. Next, he must get a majority of seats in the National Assembly before he can begin honoring his campaign promises.
Sunday night, however, was for celebrating his victory over the National Front’s Marine Le Pen. Macron won 66.1 percent of the vote to his opponent’s 33.9 percent.
After his victory, Macron addressed his supporters at the Louvre Palace in the center of Paris and told them: “Tonight, you won, France won. Everyone told us it was impossible, but they don’t know France.”
He acknowledged the frustration and anger of voters who supported Marine Le Pen and said he would spend his five years in office fighting the divisions that undermined France. “I will do everything to make sure you never have reason again to vote for extremes,” he said.
This week, Macron will exchange his campaign-trail rhetoric for detailed negotiations with potential prime ministers and prospective parliamentarians.
Elections for the National Assembly are on June 11 and Macron must turn his En Marche movement, with its 250,000 members, into a political party with a minimum of 289 deputies in the assembly. The potential of the Macron presidency could be neutralized by poor results in June.
The French Fifth Republic has been hampered on three occasions when a president of one party has been forced to appoint a prime minister from a rival party. These periods of “cohabitation” meant the president and prime minister often worked against each, rather than together.
If Macron succeed sin buildinga working majority, his next task will be to implement the program he campaigned on.
France has a series of endemic problems, which contributed to the appeal of Le Pen. There is a great divide between urban and rural areas, as jobs and businesses gravitate to the cities from the countryside.
In urban areas, there is often a division between the prosperous centers and the large peripheral housing estates. The estates are often home to France’s Muslim minority.
Another key division is between young people and older generations, with unemployment among the young consistently high and often higher in the housing estates and the countryside.
To address these problems, Macron wants to cut corporation tax from 33 percent to 25 percent and make it easier for French businesses to employ new workers. At the moment, French employers are reluctant to employ new people because of the added costs they must pay to the government.