Two months ago, in my rundown of Emmanuel Macron’s re-election, I predicted that the President of France would face “something of an uphill task” to retain his majority in the National Assembly, faced, as he was, with challenges from Jean-Luc Mélenchon to his left and Marine Le Pen to his right. Following last Sunday’s second round of the French legislative elections, my prediction has proved to have been on the money.
Macron’s Ensemble centrist alliance won 245 seats – down from 345 at the Assembly’s dissolution, and 44 seats short of the 289 needed for a majority. Meanwhile, Mélenchon’s coalition of left-wingers, communists, and greens soared from 17 seats to 131. And two months on from being bested by Macron in the second round of the presidential election, Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National shot from 9 seats to 89.
That leaves Macron well short of the majority needed to get his legislative program through. Previously in the Fifth Republic, Presidents have lost their party majorities, or been forced into so-called ‘cohabitations’ with Assembly majorities of the opposing party. But never before, since De Gaulle brought the parliamentary Fourth Republic to a close in 1958 and replaced it with one dominated by the President, has an Assembly been this well-hung.
As such, the prospects for government look uncertain. Macron lost several allies and ministers, including Richard Ferrand, the president of the National Assembly, and Brigitte Bourguignon, minister of health and social solidarity. Élisabeth Borne, his prime minister and a technocrat, almost lost to an unknown in her seat, and may well, at only a month in the role, become the shortest-lived prime minister of the Fifth Republic so far.
Certainly, Macron’s legislative agenda looks weakened. Parliamentary horse-trading will be the order of the day. The centre-right Republicans could provide him with a majority for crucial plans for raising the retirement age and reforming pensions. But the party has already expressed its desire to remain in opposition, unwilling to taint itself with an association with Macron as it worries about Le Pen’s threat from its right.
Stalemate thus appears to be the order of the day. Macron could call fresh elections in a year or so. But it appears French voters are now stuck in three blocs of the right, left, and centre, and it is debatable how much another vote might change. Instead, the next five years seems likely to hold for France further economic stagnation, failed integration policies, rising crime, sclerotic unemployment, and crisis in Europe.
Of course, as President, Macron retains full control over his country’s foreign policy. He has displayed this facility clearly in recent months with his efforts to prevent Russia facing “humiliation” over Ukraine, and to press for further integration through France’s six months chairing the European Council. Yet Macron’s hopes of leading a united Europe are challenged by ongoing disagreements over how to handle Putin’s invasion – and by a potential Eurozone debt crisis.
De Gaulle was able to replace the Fourth Republic by the Fifth due to the crisis in Algeria and the inability of a dysfunctional parliamentary system to handle it. A central plank of Mélenchon’s platform is to begin consultations on tearing up the constitutional order and inaugurating a Sixth Republic. As Macron finds the political tide overwhelming him, don’t be surprised if the calls for reform grow louder – and produce, as Macron’s successor, either a Marxist or Marine Le Pen.