French Parliament Election - 30 June 2024
Initial projections from France's snap legislative elections on 07 July 2024 showed the New Popular Front – a hastily cobbled-together leftist coalition – leading both Macron's ruling party (in second place) and the right-wing National Rally (in third) but falling short of securing an absolute majority, according to Ipsos Talan polling. Marine Le Pen's far-right National Rally party led after the first round with 33% of the vote followed by the New Popular Front with almost 28% and President Macron's ruling coalition trailing at 20%.
French President Emmanuel Macron on Sunday 09 June 2024 announced that he was dissolving the parliament after the far-right defeated his centrist alliance in EU polls. The president’s Renaissance party and its allies won less than half the 31-percent result of the Marine Le Pen's far-right National Rally (RN) party in Sunday’s European Parliament vote. The crushing results prompted him to trigger surprise snap elections for June 30 and July 7 after two years of limping along with a minority government. Macron called snap legislative elections on June 30 and July 7. Macron would remain president for three more years and direct defence and foreign policy if RN were to win a parliamentary majority. However, he would lose control over the domestic agenda, including economic policy, security, immigration and finances. He has said in advance he would not quit if his ruling alliance loses.
The president of France’s far-right National Rally claimed historic gains for the party Sunday and blamed French President Emmanuel Macron for “pushing France into uncertainty and instability.” In a somber speech after the second-round legislative election, Jordan Bardella denounced the political maneuvering that led the National Rally to fall far short of expectations. An unprecedented number of candidates who qualified for the runoff stepped aside to allow an opponent to go head-to-head with the National Rally candidate, increasing the chances of defeating them. Despite projections widely considered disappointing for the anti-immigration, nationalist party, it still increased its seat count in parliament to an unprecedented high, according to polling projections. No party won a majority, threatening to plunge France into political and economic turmoil.
The French left is ready to form a new government and Prime Minister Gabriel Attal should resign after predictions Sunday showed a broad left-wing alliance could become the largest bloc in parliament ahead of the far right, hard-left figurehead Jean-Luc Melenchon said. "Our people have clearly rejected the worst-case scenario," said the three-time presidential candidate of the France Unbowed party. "The prime minister has to go... The New Popular Front is ready to govern." The president fuelled speculation of a government reshuffle in December 2023 by promising a new political initiative. This came after the year 2023 was bookended by political crises prompted by highly contested reforms of the pension system and immigration laws. The move comes just five months before European Parliament elections, with Eurosceptics expected to make strong gains at a time of widespread public discontent over surging living costs and the difficulties European governments face in curbing migration flows. Opinion polls showed Macron’s party is trailing that of far-right leader Marine Le Pen by around eight to 10 points ahead of the June vote.
By January 2024 President Macron was prepared to unveil a long-awaited cabinet reshuffle in an attempt to give a new impetus to his presidency. Macron accepted the resignation of Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne 08 January 2024. In her resignation letter to Emmanuel Macron, Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne considered it "more necessary than ever to continue reforms." “I tender the resignation of my government and tell you how passionate I am about this task,” Elizabeth Bourne stated, referring to the “will” of the head of state “to appoint a new prime minister.” Bourne has been in office since May 2022, serving for 1 year, 7 months and 23 days. The newspapers reported that she may be succeeded by the Minister of Education, Gabriel Attal, as he is considered the most likely candidate according to several sources within the authority.
The change in prime minister would not necessarily lead to a shift in political tack, but rather signal a desire to move beyond the pension and immigration reforms and focus on new priorities, including hitting full employment. Macron and his government, led by Borne, have struggled to deal with a more turbulent parliament to pass laws since losing their absolute majority shortly after Macron was re-elected for a second mandate in 2022.
The leaders of France’s main leftwing parties, including firebrand three-time presidential candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon, have called for unity in the run-up to snap legislative elections set for June 30 and July 7. However, discussions about an electoral coalition and a common platform may be difficult, especially with just three weeks of campaigning before the first round.
Socialist Party leader Olivier Faure, Greens leader Marine Tondelier, French Communist Party (PCF) chief Fabien Roussel and La France insoumise (France Unbowed or LFI) lawmaker François Ruffin all called for unity on Sunday after projections showed that the far-right Rassemblement National (National Rally or RN), led by Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardella, would win 31.5 percent of the vote. This was a 15-point margin over Macron’s centrist group and 16 points better than the third-place Socialists. Leftwing voters later gathered spontaneously at the Place de la République in Paris to protest the RN.
The leaders’ calls for union were accompanied by messages addressed to LFI leader Mélénchon and his party. “We need a coalition that brings together people capable of agreeing in a democratic way. There will be no alignment with anyone,” said Faure. “A coalition is not a leader deciding for everyone else, it’s a permanent dialogue, a democratic and fraternal way of working.” Mélenchon, a key figure on France’s left who wanted Sunday’s European elections to serve as precursor to the 2027 presidential vote, appealed directly to voters at an impromptu meeting not far from Place de la République. “Everyone is capable of choosing the platform that enables popular unity,” Mélenchon said, while emphasising “the disastrous responsibility of all those who denied us the possibility of entering this battle united, so we could have challenged the National Rally for the lead”.
The prospect of a united left recalls the New Ecological and Social Popular Union (NUPES) which emerged in the run-up to the last legislative elections in France in 2022. The Socialist Party, the PCF and the Greens had all agreed an accord with LFI, which included LFI policy proposals such as a €1,400 monthly minimum wage, a price freeze on basic necessities, a rollback of the retirement age to 60 and a shift in institutional power from the president to parliament. The parties also agreed to field a single NUPES candidate in each of France's 577 legislative districts. This strategy helped enable 151 NUPES candidates to win Assembly seats in a vote that saw RN candidates win 89.
While the Socialists’ Faure, the PCF’s Roussel and LFI deputy Ruffin on Monday called for a “Popular Front”, a reference to the leftwing coalition that won elections in 1936, LFI coordinator Manuel Bompard said on Franceinfo that such an alliance must be based on the NUPES platform. With or without LFI and Mélenchon's participation, agreement on a common platform is far from assured, as the NUPES platform has fallen apart since it was established in 2022.
Macron called 12 June 2024 for moderate politicians from the left and the right to come together in order to defeat Marine Le Pen's far-right National Rally (RN) in an upcoming snap legislative election. He called "many of our compatriots and political leaders who do not recognise themselves in the extremist fever" to "build a new project ... a coalition to govern, a coalition to act in the service of the French and for the republic".
Just a few days after the shocking announcement, Macron said that he wants "men and women of goodwill who were able to say 'no' to extremes to join together to be able to build a joint project" for the country. He acknowledged making mistakes, saying people had expressed their indignation but he also added that he felt they were not being heard. "I hope that when the time comes, men and women of goodwill who will have been able to say no to the extremes will come together... will put themselves in a position to build a shared, sincere project that is useful to the country," Macron told journalists. "The answer, in my eyes, could not come through changing the government or a coalition... dissolving parliament was necessary," he added.
Macron further said that he doesn't want to give the keys of power to the extreme right in 2027. "So I fully accept having triggered a movement to provide clarification," he said, claiming that RN policies would impoverish workers and retirees. “The answer, in my eyes, could not come through changing the government or a coalition... Dissolving parliament was necessary,” Macron said.
He acknowledged voters’ “difficulty getting by, even when they’re working, very everyday difficulties” that had created “anger, sometimes resentment”. People “feel that they aren’t listened to or respected... We can’t remain indifferent to all these messages,” he added. Macron, who has three years left of his second presidential term, is hoping voters will band together to contain the far right in national elections in a way they did not do for the European vote.
“Things are simple today: we have unnatural alliances at both extremes ... who will not be able to implement any program," Macron said. Macron that one reason he had called early legislative elections was to prevent the far right from winning the presidency in 2027 polls when he must stand down. “I do not want to give the keys to power to the far right in 2027,” he told reporters.
Macron especially lashed out at conservatives, whose leader Eric Ciotti on 11 June 2024 announced an alliance with the RN, as well as a left-wing alliance including the hard-left France Unbowed (LFI). Macron described it as a “pact with the devil”. The right had “in a few hours turned its back on the legacy of General (Charles) de Gaulle” as well as former presidents Jacques Chirac and Nicolas Sarkozy, he said.
Meanwhile, mainstream left parties had allied with an LFI he accused of “anti-Semitism” over its response to Palestinian militant group Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel and the war in Gaza. Voters had a choice between “unholy alliances at the two extremes who agree on almost nothing except handing out jobs” versus his own bloc, with “a single vision of the country” both at home and abroad. “We aren’t perfect... but we’ve got results,” he insisted, pointing to job creation, the energy transition and backing for Ukraine as high points.
In the event that the snap elections deal Macron’s camp another blow and hand the French far right an even larger majority in the National Assembly, the president reaffirmed that he has no plans to resign from his post. “I want to nip that idea in the bud, [the chance of that happening] never existed,” he told journalists.
France’s far-right National Rally (RN) party held a clear lead in the first round of the country’s snap parliamentary elections, according to exit polls. Pollsters IFOP, Ipsos, OpinionWay and Elabe projected Marine Le Pen’s RN winning around 34 percent of votes, while the left-wing New Popular Front (NFP) coalition was seen coming in second with around 29 percent, ahead of President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist Ensemble Alliance in third spot with around 20.3 percent. Pollster Elabe said in an estimate for BFM TV that the RN and its allies could win 260-310 parliament seats in the second voting round on July 7, while Ipsos projected a range of 230-280 seats for RN and its allies in a poll for France Television. A total 289 seats are needed for an absolute majority in the National Assembly, France’s lower house of parliament.
According to Rim-Sarah Alouane, an academic at University Toulouse-Capitole, “she [Le Pen] has done plastic surgery to her party”. “But is it still the same rotten, xenophobic, anti-Semitic, anti-Muslim, anti-minorities party … we know what the far right is standing for,” Alouane told Al Jazeera. She said the results of this vote were also a rejection of Macron’s policies.
In the past, France’s centre-right and centre-left parties have teamed up to keep the RN from taking power, but that dynamic, called the “republican front” in France, is now less certain than ever. Jean-Luc Melenchon, who leads the left-wing New Popular Front, has said he will withdraw candidates who have placed in third in the first round of parliamentary elections, in order to defeat the highest number of far-right RN candidates in the second round. “In line with our principles and our stances in all previous elections, we will never allow the National Rally to achieve victory,” said Melenchon.
To participate in the second round, a party's candidate must pass a 12.5% threshold. Second-round voters in many constituencies will need to choose between a far-left candidate and a far-right one. In constituencies where Macron’s Renaissance failed to make it to the second round, the party endorsed any candidate – including far-left ones — who is not from the far-right National Rally, as per a speech that Prime Minister Gabriel Attal made 01 July 2024. “Our objective is clear: prevent National Rally from obtaining in the second round an absolute majority” that would give the party control of the lower house of parliament, Attal said of the second round.
Minutes after the first-round results were announced on June 30, France Unbowed founder Jean-Luc Mélenchon announced the NFP had a plan - the Front républicain – when voters turn out in force to defeat the far right. This strategy – of building a “front” or "dam" against the far right – was broadly followed by Macron’s camp as well, with both coalitions calling on their voters to cast ballots for better-placed political rivals to keep the RN from power. Between the first and second rounds, more than 200 candidates stood down to stop the far right crossing the threshold to victory.
The forces of the left managed in just a couple of days to unite behind a common political programme that promised a decisive break with years of deeply unpopular Macronist policies. In place of the president’s pro-business reforms, the new coalition’s programme promised to raise the minimum wage, lower the retirement age and put a price cap on basic goods to fight France’s worsening cost-of-living crisis. This ambitious programme would be financed by sweeping reforms to France’s tax system, including reinstating the wealth tax that Macron had abolished and levying a windfall tax on corporations to pay for an increase in social spending.
The centre-left Raphaël Glucksmann of the Socialists who himself has ruled out running for Prime Minister, had publicly said he does not want the divisive Mélenchon in the role. Greens leader Marine Tondelier, herself a strong performer throughout the campaign, also said Mélenchon, whose fiercely loyal support base is rivalled by legions of detractors put off by his combative debating style and thunderous oratory, will not be in the running.
France's New Popular Front won the largest number of seats in the final round of snap parliamentary elections, leaving behind the remnants of President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist camp and the far-right National Rally trailing in third place. It was a staggering result for a closely fought election that left the country without a clear candidate for prime minister – and the hastily assembled broad leftist coalition without an absolute majority that would allow it to push through its ambitious program.
After finishing first in the opening round of France’s legislative elections, the far-right National Rally (RN) is trailing third in the final round, estimated by Ipsos Talan to have won between 138 and 145 seats in the National Assembly alongside a splinter group of renegade conservatives from Les Républicains. Marine Le Pen’s party needed 289 seats to win an absolute majority in the 577-seat lower house of parliament. They’ve fallen short – far short.
With no party wielding an absolute majority in parliament and no obvious way forward for the three major political blocs, France is facing the very real prospect of years of political gridlock. And while Macron has vowed not to step down from the presidency until his mandate ends in 2027, years of repeated failure for any of the three movements to pass major – and much-needed – reforms is unlikely to persuade the growing number of RN voters across France that the left or centre are capable of turning the country around.
While the RN is still licking its wounds, tonight’s upset doesn’t change the fact that the far-right party has won the largest number of seats in its history. Already, party president Jordan Bardella has slammed the Republican Front as a “disgraceful alliance” cooked up behind closed doors to keep his party from power – and to prop up a discredited Macronist establishment with left-wing support while leaving no one in a position to run the country. For Marine Le Pen, who will run again as the RN’s presidential candidate in the 2027 elections, it is a state of affairs that can only benefit a party that is now closer than ever to taking office. "Our victory has been merely delayed," she said.
On 23 August 2024, La France Insoumise (LFI) asked President Emmanuel Macron for control of the government, while the conservatives warned that they would block any administration that includes leftist ministers. This is the summary of the first day of talks between Macron and the leaders of the main parties, aiming to find a solution to the situation created after the early June elections, which did not produce a clear majority. Lucie Castets, the candidate for French Prime Minister from the New Popular Front (NFP), asserted that she is ready to form coalitions that would allow her to govern. After her meeting with Macron, she said the dialogue had been valuable and that French president acknowledged that the people had sent a message of change in the July 7 elections, although she noted that his temptation to “compose his government” remains. Castets argued that the NFP should govern since it and its partners secured 193 legislators. However, they are aware that they do not have an absolute majority (289) and that they must find compromises.
“The President seems to begin to understand that he lost these legislative elections, but he still does not seem to grasp all the consequences,” said Manuel Bompard, coordinator of La France Insoumise, which, along with the French Communist Party, completes the four families of the NFP. The presence of this more radical group, founded by Jean-Luc Mélenchon, raises the most questions about the NFP’s ability to reach agreements with other forces. Specifically, the other major blocs threaten to bring down any government that includes LFI figures, including Macron’s camp. But in a significant detail, the first secretary of the Socialist Party said that during the meeting, Macron admitted that all the forces that participated in the “republican front” to stop what seemed like the inevitable victory of the far-right have legitimacy to govern.
The France Unbowed (LFI) party, part of a broad left-wing coalition that secured the largest share of seats in the July parliamentary election, by 01 September 2024 began gathering signatures to remove President Emmanuel Macron from office. The move came after Macron refused to appoint the New Popular Front coalition’s candidate – Lucie Castets – as prime minister. “The draft resolution to initiate the procedure for the impeachment of the President of the Republic, in accordance with Article 68 of the Constitution, was sent today to parliamentarians for co-signatures,” the LFI’s parliamentary leader, Mathilde Panot, wrote on X (formerly Twitter) on 31 August 2024.
To initiate the impeachment process, the LFI, which had 72 seats in the 577-seat National Assembly, must collect signatures from at least 10% of the members of parliament under its motion. Article 68 of the French Constitution stipulates that the action could be implemented “in the event of a breach of duty manifestly incompatible with the exercise of his mandate.” “Macron refuses to submit to the people’s vote, so we must dismiss him,” Panot explained, sharing the draft of the resolution, which stated that “the National Assembly (lower house) and Senate can and must defend democracy against the president’s authoritarian leanings.”
The lawmakers argued that it is not up to the president “to do political horse trading,” referring to Macron’s struggle to find a new prime minister since accepting Gabriel Attal’ resignation last month. The LFI is part of the New Popular Front alliance (NFP) – along with the Socialists, Communists, and Greens – which emerged as the winner of the snap parliamentary election called by Macron earlier this year. The coalition fell short of an outright majority, forcing Macron to enter negotiations to appoint a new prime minister and form a government. French media have noted that it would be hard to find a new PM “who would not be immediately ousted in a confidence vote.”
On 05 Septembe 2024 President Emmanuel Macron named Michel Barnier as France’s new prime minister, hoping the Brexit negotiator and veteran conservative can work with the country's bitterly divided legislature to end political turmoil that has roiled Macron's presidency. Barnier, the oldest prime minister in the history of modern France, struggled to name a new government, underlining the complicated topography of France's political landscape after Macron's ill-fated decision to call a snap legislative election. Barnier's appointment marks a potential turning point following two months of political chaos in the wake of snap elections called by Macron that left no group close to an overall majority in the National Assembly lower house of parliament.
An Ifop poll commissioned by the French weekly Journal du Dimanche found 09 eptember 2024 that 52 percent of respondents said they were satisfied with newly appointed Prime Minister Michel Barnier, who was named by Emmanuel Macron after two months of political deadlock. The poll, which had a margin of error of up to 3.1 points, also found that almost three out of four respondents believed the conservative prime minister would quickly be toppled by a no-confidence vote. By comparison, 53 percent of respondents approved the nomination of Barnier's predecessor, Gabriel Attal, when he was appointed prime minister in early January, becoming France's youngest-ever prime minister at 34.
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