After not obtaining an absolute majority in the second round of legislative elections on Sunday, the ruling Ensemble coalition will have to form a coalition or find “majorities of ideas” to legislate. This is an unprecedented situation under the Fifth Republic, which places the National Assembly at the center of the French political game. Analysis.
“We will work from tomorrow (Monday) to build a majority of action, there is no alternative to this meeting to guarantee the stability of our country and lead the necessary reforms.” These were the words of the French prime minister, Elisabeth Borne, pronounced on the night of Sunday, June 19, once it was clear that the Ensemble coalition would only have a simple majority in the National Assembly.
“From the moment that Elisabeth Borne considers that there is no majority, her action will consist of trying, according to the texts of the law, to build “majorities of ideas” that bring together people who, whatever their political affiliation, can meet into a program of action”, explains Arnaud Benedetti, associate professor at Paris-Sorbonne and director of the ‘Revue politique et parlementaire’.
“The reality is that the day after the second round of legislative elections, there is no clear majority for the first time in the Fifth Republic,” continues the political scientist. The cards have been shuffled in the chamber: with 245 deputies, the government-affiliated coalition lacks 44 seats to be able to vote on the reforms – a bill on purchasing power, pension reform, among others – that the Executive It was planned to start in the next few months.
“My fear is that the country will be blocked,” the government spokeswoman, Olivia Gregoire, told the French network ‘France Inter’ this Monday morning. She asked if France is governable after the elections, she admitted that it would be “complicated”.
A precaution that did not embarrass Nupes deputy François Ruffin, recently re-elected on Sunday night: “The country is blocked. Emmanuel Macron does not have the legitimacy to impose his project, Marine Le Pen does not have the legitimacy to impose his project. But there is to say that we (the deputies of Nupes, editor’s note) do not have a majority and legitimacy to impose our project.”
With three political forces neutralizing each other, the new configuration of the National Assembly is unprecedented. According to Arnaud Benedetti, the Executive will only have an absolute majority in two ways: “It will be based on the texts that are debated in the National Assembly, or through a coalition with other key political forces.”
The first option had been followed during the two legislatures with relative majorities that the Fifth Republic knew, under General de Gaulle (from 1958 to 1962) and under François Mitterrand (from 1988 to 1993): on each occasion political allies were identified for the vote on each law, which still does not happen today.
Numerically, the Ensemble equation could be solved with a coalition with the Republicans (61 deputies). But the party’s president, Christian Jacob, clearly warned on Sunday: “We are in opposition, we will remain in opposition.”
The fact is that, in a Republic that does not like coalitions, the “case by case” option seems to be preferred by the Executive, whose leader spoke of the “action majority”, which is reminiscent of the ” majorities of ideas”, a concept that goes back to Edgar Faure, minister of de Gaulle and Pompidou.
First large-scale test in the National Assembly on July 5
This turbulent political situation is, in any case, a sign that parliamentarians are once again at the center of French political life.
“It is clear that the National Assembly is regaining influence and weight,” explains the political scientist. Where the majority had more than 300 deputies in 2017, it will only have 245 in 2022, leaving the absolute majority set at 289. On the contrary, the opposition groups emerge stronger from these elections: Nupes has 131 deputies, while the left in a broad sense he was 72 five years ago. The National Assembly went from 8 to 89 deputies.
During the previous five years, the opposition to the ruling party lamented that the National Assembly had become “a recording chamber of the president’s wishes.” According to Arnaud Benedetti, “the government is now technically at the mercy of negative votes. If all the other political forces begin to vote as one against a text, the government will be overtaken.”
The first acid test will take place in the hemicycle on July 5: Elisabeth Borne must make a general policy declaration before the deputies to present the main political orientations of the Government, at the end of which the National Assembly could be asked for a vote of trust (the latter is not constitutionally mandatory).
It is also the day that Nupes intends to table a motion of no confidence against the government, the left-wing coalition announced on Twitter on Monday.
A majority vote on the motion could lead to the overthrow of the government: this option is now theoretically possible, if all the opposition forces unite to get 289 votes.
Before that, this parliamentary tool could provoke, above all, a clarification on the benches of the hemicycle, as Dominique Rousseau, professor of constitutional law, explains in ‘France Inter’: “It will be very interesting to see who will vote on this motion of censure and who will abstain There will be a first measurement of the balance of power in the National Assembly.”
Will the Ensemble coalition have an absolute majority on July 5? If not, the blockade could be even greater than the current one. And in the event of an unsustainable situation, “the President of the Republic has an important institutional weapon: the possibility of dissolving himself”, recalls Arnaud Benedetti.
“But the risk is that, after the return to the polls, it finds itself with a National Assembly that further expands the movement observed after the last legislative elections. It does not seem that a dissolution will be possible for some time.”
*Adapted from its original French version
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