France advances
A new era with an Assembly filled with new faces
After choosing the relatively unknown Emmanuel Macron, 39, as president on May 7, French voters gave Mr. Macron’s political coalition a victory in the first and second rounds of parliamentary voting, completed Sunday. In effect, they dispatched the nation’s two traditional parties — the Republicans and the Socialists — to the boneyard and rid the political system for the time being of its far-left and far-right parties as well.
Mr. Macron’s party, La République En Marche! (the Republic on the Move), took 308 seats in the 577-seat National Assembly, while its partner, the Democratic Movement, took another 47. That gives Mr. Macron’s coalition an overwhelming advantage.
Even more striking is the overall number of new deputies elected to office. Three-quarters of them are new to the National Assembly, with many of the newcomers members of Mr. Macron’s REM. Also, in the ruling coalition, nearly half of the deputies are women; as a result, women account for more than a third of the legislative body, a new record. The traditional parties are grousing that the new deputies, some of them enthusiastic amateurs, don’t know the parliamentary ropes and will thus get beaten up when the new government tries to implement its program. This judgment is probably a miscalculation on their part because, when it comes to actual legislation, Mr. Macron’s party will really only need to say, “OK, let’s vote.”
The Republicans and other rightwing parties got 130 seats. The Socialists won 50. The far-left and the Communists got 27. The far-right National Front of Marine Le Pen took a drubbing, retaining only eight seats.
Some of Mr. Macron’s opponents are citing the fact that the voting in the second round on Sunday was a recent record low. On the other hand, there were enough 50-percentplus-one wins for his coalition the previous Sunday to make a high turnout less important. REM won decisive victories in both the presidential and parliamentary elections, giving them a clear mandate from French voters to govern.
France’s problems, which Mr. Macron and REM now have to confront, remain the same. Unemployment is high at 10 percent. French labor laws are archaic. Immigration is high, particularly in terms of absorbing the new people into jobs, housing and other social services. France has what some would consider to be unnecessary, expensive military commitments in Africa and the Middle East. On the plus side, under Mr. Macron, it appears that French relations with Germany, led by Chancellor Angela Merkel, already appear to be good. British governance, somewhat adrift following the Conservatives’ June 8 setback, with Prime Minister Theresa May’s future very much in doubt and Brexit negotiations pending, makes the United Kingdom a doubtful partner for France at the moment. Mr. Macron is making an effort with President Donald Trump but may have already put him and the United States on the back burner in terms of French international political priorities.
The differences in systems are probably too great to draw any valid parallels with the United Kingdom or the United States at this point. But for France, both the rejection of the old political order, without violence, and the arrival of a new team to address its problems should be seen as positive developments.