‘Right’ slap at Macron
French prez losing parliament majority
French President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist alliance was projected to lose its majority despite getting the most seats in the final round of parliamentary elections Sunday, while the farright National Rally appeared to have made big gains.
The projections, which are based on partial results, say Macron’s candidates would win between 230 and 250 seats — much less than the 289 required to have a straight majority at the National Assembly, France’s most powerful house of parliament.
The situation, which is highly unusual in France, is expected to make Macron’s political maneuvering difficult if the projections are borne out.
A new coalition — made up of the hard left, the Socialists and the Greens — is expected to become the main opposition force with about 140 to 160 seats.
The National Rally is projected to register a huge surge with potentially more than 80 seats, up from eight before. Polling was held nationwide to select the 577 members of the assembly.
The strong performance of both the National Rally and the leftist coalition called Nupes, led by hard-left leader Jean-Luc Melenchon, is expected to make it harder for Macron (pictured) to implement the agenda he was reelected on in May, including tax cuts and raising France’s retirement age from 62 to 65.
Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne said the “unprecedented” situation “is a risk to our country faced with challenges at the national level as well as at the international scale.”
“As the central force in that new Assembly . . . we will work, as of tomorrow, to build an action-oriented majority,” she said.
“There’s no alternative but gathering to guarantee our country some stability and lead the necessary reforms,” she added.
Borne, who won a seat in western France, suggested Macron’s centrist alliance will seek support from lawmakers from diverse political forces to find “good compromises.”
The National Rally’s leader, Marine Le Pen, who lost to Macron in the presidential election, was re-elected as MP in her stronghold of Hénin-Beaumont, in northern France.
“The Macron adventure has reached its end,” Le Pen said. The group of National Rally lawmakers “will be by far the biggest of the history of our political family.”
Acting National Rally president Jordan Bardella compared his party’s showing to a “tsunami.” “Tonight’s message is that the French people made . . . Emmanuel Macron a minority president,” he said on TF1 television.
“It’s the electoral failure of the ‘Macronie’,” Mélenchon said, criticizing “a moral failure of those people who lectured everyone nonstop and said they would block the far-right, and the main result is that they reinforced it.”
Must compromise
Macron’s government will still have the ability to rule, but only by bargaining with legislators. The centrists could try to negotiate on a case by case basis with lawmakers from the center-left and from the conservative party — with the goal of preventing opposition lawmakers from being numerous enough to reject the proposed measures.
The government could also occasionally use a special measure provided by the French Constitution to adopt a law without a vote.
Government spokesperson Olivia Grégoire said on France 2 television that “we’ve known better evenings. This is a disappointing top position, but still a top position.”