France Will Le Pen's right-wing nationalists come to power?
Many in France are rubbing their eyes in amazement and Germany and Europe are also looking towards Paris with concern. Will Marine Le Pen's Rassemblement National (RN) manage to win an absolute majority in this Sunday's parliamentary elections and install a right-wing nationalist government in France for the first time since the Second World War? Or will the extreme right be successfully blocked by the center-left forces, the majority of whom have already made it clear that they do not want to govern together afterwards?
05.07.2024, 12:27
SDA
The opponents are the young star of the right-wing nationalists, Jordan Bardella (28), a political foster son of Le Pen, and the equally eloquent Prime Minister Gabriel Attal (35). President Emmanuel Macron only appointed Attal as Prime Minister at the beginning of the year in the hope that the young and dynamic Attal would put a stop to the advance of Le Pen and Bardella.
Seat distribution difficult to predict
In the first round of voting, however, as in the European elections, the right-wing nationalists were ahead, followed by the new left-wing alliance and Macron's centrist camp in third place. 76 of the 577 seats have already been allocated, most of them to the RN (39) or the left-wing alliance (32). "Unlike in a German parliamentary election, the distribution of seats after the second round is difficult to predict," says political scientist Isabelle Guinaudeau from Sciences Po in Paris.
As the seats are allocated according to the majority voting system, the third-placed candidates of the other parties have withdrawn in over 200 constituencies to increase the chance that the remaining candidate of a bourgeois party will beat the candidate of the right-wing nationalists. The big question this time is whether this protective wall against the extreme right, which is often practiced in France, will hold.
With an absolute majority for the RN, Macron is under pressure to act
Whether the voters of the eliminated or withdrawn parties support the RN or their opponents in the run-off elections is "very difficult to anticipate and the result will be close in many cases", says Guinaudeau.
And what kind of government will France be facing? Regardless of the outcome of the election, it is expected that the existing government of Prime Minister Gabriel Attal will remain in office for at least a few more days on a caretaker basis until there is clarity about the formation of a future government.
Should the RN win an absolute majority, Macron would be under political pressure to appoint a prime minister from the ranks of the right-wing nationalists. This would mean that for the first time since 1997, there would be a so-called cohabitation in France, meaning that the president and prime minister would represent different political tendencies.
Will conservatives help Le Pen gain a majority?
With a strong relative majority for the RN, it is expected that it will try to win over more MPs from the conservative Républicains (LR) in order to gain decision-making power in parliament.
The former People's Party had split in the run-up to the election. Its leader Éric Ciotti had agreed to cooperate with the RN without his party's consent, but only a small number of MPs followed him. The question now is how the remaining MPs, who received around ten percent of the vote in the first round, will behave.
At the moment, it remains to be seen what will happen in France if the alliance against the RN works. As the other camps, including the reinvigorated Socialists, do not want to react together in a kind of national coalition, the current government could remain in office as a transitional government or a government of experts could be appointed. This threatens to bring France to a political standstill. A government without a majority would not be able to get new projects off the ground.
Le Pen benefited from disappointment with Macron
The final round of the French election is definitely a test of strength between President Macron and RN leader Le Pen, who have already faced each other twice as presidential candidates. When Macron took office in 2017, he promised to stop the rise of the right-wing nationalists and keep the party, which still bore its original name Front National at the time, small.
With his new centrist alliance in 2017, Macron promised the dawn of a new world with more growth and justice. While the ambitious young president quickly gained a place on the international stage with his visions, many people in France felt that their everyday concerns were not being taken seriously, especially outside of the major cities.
This is where Le Pen came in, presenting herself as an advocate for those left behind who are susceptible to the fear of migration and the loss of national identity stoked by the RN. She combined the renaming of the previously far-right party with a demonization and the renunciation of overly radical positions. Obviously, her plan to make her party electable even among the middle classes worked.
European trend towards the right
Like right-wing parties in other European countries such as Italy, the Netherlands and Germany, the Rassemblement National is on its way to becoming a new people's party - at the expense of the previously strong bourgeois parties. In France, Macron has also weakened the Socialists and Conservatives with the centrist camp he created in 2017 by integrating leading representatives of both camps into his broad current. Following the president's failed bid for more power in the early parliamentary elections, the Macron alliance is now itself facing a shambles and, according to all forecasts, will only be represented in parliament in greatly reduced numbers.
