Majority squandered: how will Macron now govern France?

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Jun 24

The results of Sunday’s French legislative elections have sent shockwaves across the continent. Having played with fire for the past five years, Emmanuel Macron has finally burned his fingers. He will be the first president in the fifth republic’s history to oversee a full presidential term without a parliamentary majority. Overly fixated on governing Europe, it appears that Emmanuel Macron had forgotten to govern France.

These results have exposed Macron’s presidential legitimacy (or lack thereof) as little more than an empty vote against the ‘far-right’. With the French National Front becoming the primary opposition party by gaining a record-breaking ninety seats, one does not know whether to laugh or cry at the lefties that helped to put Macron back into power to “keep out the extremes”.

Many will be wondering what the fuss is all about. Germany often has two/three party coalitions in government, whilst the US senate encourages bipartisanship through the filibuster. The culture of compromise is not one which is engraved in the French fifth republic constitution, however. This is mostly due to the historical context surrounding its ratification. Indeed, the parliamentary democracy of the French fourth republic had been a disaster. On average, a government collapsed every nine months due to disagreements inside the coalition in power. On top of that, the ongoing Algerian crisis was threatening to snowball into outright civil war and a military coup d’état. Upon his return to power, Charles De Gaulle rewrote the French constitution to give the president an array of new powers. The general had publicly voiced his aversion to parliamentary democracy which he believed engendered a system which placed party interests over those of the country.

Since then, there have been further reforms to the constitution. When the presidential term was shortened to five years, the legislative elections were also synchronised with the presidential elections. Held just over a month after the presidential election, the new legislative election time made it even easier for a president to win his majority. Macron thus finds himself in a rather unusual position.

The French president has essentially been limited to five options.

1. Centre-right coalition.

Following the release of the exit polls, many political commentators believed that a coalition between Macron’s Ensemble and the centre-right Les Républicains was the most obvious outcome. Admittedly, the two parliamentary groups align on many areas- particularly on the economy. Most notably, raising the retirement age to sixty-five, relaxing France’s rigid labour laws, and cutting public spending. Furthermore, the coalition would be befitting to Macron’s electoral shift to the right. In 2017, Macron’s electorate corelated positively with the 2012 Socialist electorate. Five years later, however, the French president’s electorate resembled that of Sarkozy’s 2012 voters- progressing in the most historically right-wing constituencies such as Western Paris and the Vendée.

Nevertheless, this coalition currently seems unlikely. Having spent the past five years depleting the Republicans of its men, Macron has now run out of reserves. Indeed, most of the Republicans’ more centrist, liberal and globalist-minded deputies, such as future economic minister Bruno Le Maire, had already crossed the floor to re-join the French president’s governing party back in 2017. The most notable party betrayal came from former president Nicholas Sarkozy who openly endorsed Macron’s re-election. Peculiar yet expected from a man desperately willing to prostitute himself to have the electric tag removed from his ankle.

The Republican leadership has evidently done its homework this year, however. Whilst the last remaining potential Macron allies lost their seats, the Republican vote held firm in seats contested by the more socially right-wing and national-minded wing of the party.

The appointment of Olivier Marleix as the party’s new president of the National Assembly is certainly symbolic of the party’s new direction. Having headed the inquiry into the Alstom affair, worked tirelessly to expose the president’s ‘corruption pact’, and continually voiced his opposition to the vaccine passport, Marleix is certainly no friend of Emmanuel Macron. The Republicans will thus look to reposition themselves as the alternative right-wing voice to the Macron-Le Pen duopoly.

2. Disunifying the left.

Going against the tide of history, the French left-wing parties succeeded in uniting under a progressive alliance. Overall, the coalition won around 140 seats in the National Assembly. Headed by presidential candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the NUPES alliance was made up of far-left parties La France Insoumise (LFI) and the Communist party as well as the more moderate and republican Socialist and Ecologist parties.

With such a plethora of ideologies under one umbrella, Macron will be looking to divide and conquer. Arguably the greatest bone of contention will be the European question. Evident from their respective presidential campaigns, the Green and Socialist federalist vision for Europe is far more suited to the Macron project than it is to their new far-left allies’ policy of ‘disobeying’ the EU when it suits them. The nuclear debate may also create frictions within the NUPES alliance. Indeed, the French Communist party will certainly refuse to sign any common manifesto which includes the phasing out of nuclear energy- a key policy of both the Green and LFI programme.

Whether the left-wing coalition splits or not remains to be seen. The fact of the matter is that the potential moderate dissidents are not realistically enough for Macron. Indeed, the total Green and Socialist vote amounts to barely more than fifty seats. The French president would thus have to rely on every single deputy to support him- a highly unlikely feat. Macron will nonetheless see the moderate left as potential future stooges on whom he could rely to push through certain legislation.

3. Government of national unity.

Arguably the craziest thought of all but one which Emmanuel Macron has already entertained. Just two days after his disastrous electoral performance, the French president had all the respective party leaders lined up outside his office. One by one the naughty school children entered the headmaster’s office. Although we can only hypothesise on what was said, the expressions left on the departing faces suggested that there was a general reluctance to enter coalition with a man that had spent his first term ruling the country with such vigorous authority.

The idea of a government of national unity is rather ironic coming from a man that has done nothing but sow divisions across the country. The French president’s only hope of creating a Northern Irish like ‘every man and his dog’ coalition is through a rally around the flag effect. With the ongoing conflict in Ukraine and the ever-growing cost-of-living crisis, there will be substantial pressure placed on the opposition parties to put their differences aside and place the country’s interests first. However, the fact that the opposition itself is so fragmented, with both far-left and far-right fractions, tells us that any chance of a national coalition is all but dead already.

4. Playing the constitutional game.

The aforementioned fifth republic constitution grants the French president powers which his European counterparts could only dream of. The famous article 49-3 is the most likely to crop up time and time again in the French media throughout Macron’s second term in office. This particular clause gives the president the right to impose the adoption of a text by the assembly, immediately and without a vote.

Staring down the barrel of an irritatingly uncooperative opposition, Emmanuel Macron will consequently look to his constitutional right to push through his reforms. One must point out, however, that the use of article 49-3 has now been limited to one enactment per parliamentary session (and so once every six months). Furthermore, it is quasi-inconceivable that the raising of the retirement age, forced through without any parliamentary scrutiny, would not provoke civil unrest to the levels of the Gilets Jaunes protests. When questioned on France’s constitutional checks and balances, Charles De Gaulle once famously stated that “the only supreme court in France is the people”. Without a doubt, the general’s words will continue to resonate throughout Macron’s second term.

Another perk of the job is the president’s ability to dissolve the national assembly and call new elections, even just one year into the parliamentary session and without needing the approval of its deputies. If Macron fails to form a coalition government, he may choose to go down this route. However, any potential future victory would be highly dependent on the fragmentation of the left. In both 2017 and 2022, the aggregate popular vote of the left-wing parties was around 25% of the electorate. The sixty-seven seat increase in that time is rather simple: in 2017, they ran separately; in 2022, they ran on a common ticket. If the French president were to regain his majority, he would have to rely on the left reverting back to the former.

5. Technocracy.

Throughout Macron’s tenure, the consultants have settled in the heart of the French State; the management of the pandemic, military strategy, and the digitisation of French public services. Whatever the policy, consulting firms are at work in all ministries. The most notable case was McKinsey who were found to have received an eye-watering 2.4 billion euros from the French state for consultancy fees for advice on a wide range of reforms, including Macron’s unpopular refinement of the French pension system. The Macronian style of governance has overseen the assisted suicide of the state; a financed dissolvement.

Despite already having his majority at the time, Macron used the pandemic and the state of emergency to bypass all parliamentary scrutiny. Indeed, the French president set up endless public health committees, stuffed full of unelected bureaucrats and lobbyists, to push through more legislation. Once again, McKinsey was at the heart of proceedings, having been hired both by Pfizer and the French government to advice it on its vaccine policy.

EU membership has equally overseen a transformation in democracies across Europe; often in the form of increased powers for the judicial branch of government, to the detriment of parliament. Italy, for example, went from being a parliamentary regime to a de facto presidential regime in which the legislature performs a marginal role. The Italian president’s role transitioned from guarantor of the constitution to guarantor of the country’s international obligations (i.e. EU treaties and rules). Once a symbolic role, the unelected Italian head of state now intervenes in Italian democracy on a regular basis: vetoing the appointment of democratically elected eurosceptic Paolo Savona as economic minister before playing a part in the toppling of Prime Minister Conte and replacing him with the former head of the European Central Bank Mario Draghi.

Similarly, the French Constitutional and State council have given themselves the role of rubberstamping and defining EU treaties. The French president could thus look to rule by legality, using the French judicial courts to impose the will of Brussels on his parliament.