Macron faces more political storms as pact is ruled out
Fears grow that ‘country will be blocked’ after leader of Les Republicains declares he is in opposition
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 Mr 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.
Mr 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.
He will be forced to find a coalition partner or run a minority government striking bargains with lawmakers on bills to salvage his reforms to welfare benefits, pensions and tax.
“My biggest fear is that the country will be blocked,” Olivia Grégoire, government spokesman, 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.
Ms Le Pen declared Mr 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 Mr Macron’s reforms.
“The country is not ungovernable, but it’s not going to be governed the way Emmanuel Macron wanted,” Ms Le Pen said, two months after he defeated her in April’s presidential elections. “Macron is a minority president now,” she said in Henin-beaumont, 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 Mr Melenchon, who came third in the presidential elections and wants to be made prime minister in a power-sharing agreement with Mr Macron.
The Leftist said he would bring a motion of no confidence against Macron’s prime minister, Élisabeth Borne, as soon as parliament convenes in July. Ms Borne is seen as vulnerable as Mr Macron faces a new cabinet shake-up 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 Mr Melenchon’s call to turn the coalition into a single opposition group in the parliament.
Just a few weeks after he was elected for a second term as French president, Emmanuel Macron now finds himself in office, but not necessarily in power. The loss of his absolute parliamentary majority in Sunday’s national contest will make it far harder to push through the reforms he had promised, including a controversial overhaul of the pension system.
The old maxim that France is essentially ungovernable, whoever occupies the Elysée Palace, will be tested once again in the coming years. Losses had been expected but were far worse than predicted and indicate that Mr Macron’s re-election in April owed more to a vote to stop Marine Le Pen than to any enthusiasm for the incumbent.
Even so, she won 42 per cent of the popular vote and the parliamentary elections showed strong support across France for parties that would in this country be considered extreme, including communists and the hard-right. Ms Le Pen’s National Rally won 89 of the 577 seats – far more than in 2017 – and Nupes, the Left coalition, 131. In total, the two extremes hold almost as many seats as Mr Macron’s Ensemble group.
President Macron’s best hope of avoiding political paralysis is to forge links with the centreright Republicans, although they have so far rejected a formal coalition. He may be required to negotiate on an ad hoc basis, making wholesale change to France’s generous social provisions harder to achieve. He has hardly gone out of his way to cultivate allies and may pay the price.
The elections were a serious blow to the president’s prestige. He has great ambitions to lead Europe but he will struggle to lead France.