“Enthusiasm in Paris, disappointment in Moscow, relief in kyiv. Enough to be happy in Warsaw.” With this message on the X network on Sunday evening, the Polish Prime Minister, the centrist Donald Tusk, welcomed the results of the elections. French legislative elections, where the populist right not only failed in its attempt to achieve an absolute majority and force President Emmanuel Macron to hand over the leadership of the government to it, but was relegated to third placebehind the left – which won more seats than the others – and the Macronist centre, which came second and saved its day.
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Tusk was referring to the celebrations in the streets of Paris following the success of the operation launched a week earlier by Macron, a tacit alliance between the left-wing bloc New Popular Front (NFP) and the centrist group Ensemble (Together) that brings together the president’s friends.
The strategy was to build a dam against the National Rally (RN) of Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardella, for the second round of parliamentary elections.
In the elections for the French National Assembly, the electoral system has a peculiarity: when in the first round, in an electoral district none of the candidates obtains more than 50 percent of the votes, there is a second round.
For the second round of voting, the two candidates with the most votes go on to the next round, as well as the third candidate if he or she obtains more than 25 percent of the total number of registered candidates. This occurred in the vast majority of constituencies: the finalists were one candidate from the RN, one from Macronism and one from the left, in what they call triangular second rounds.
Neither bloc is even close to the absolute majority of 289 seats. They only have to negotiate, which means giving in, something that has not happened in French politics for many years.
On the evening of June 30, upon learning the results of the first round, Macron had announced that where one of his candidates had come third, he would withdraw and invite people to vote for the left-wing candidate.
The left-wing NFP did the same: where its candidate had come third, it would withdraw to support the Macronist. Thus, in more than half of the constituencies, left and centre votes were combined against Le Pen’s populist right.
The move worked. In the end, the left won 182 seats, the Macronists 168 – which with some small allies could be more than 180 – and the RN 143. The centre-right Les Républiques (LR), which rejects the RN’s anti-EU stances, won 65 seats.
Thus, no bloc is even close to the absolute majority of 289 seats. All that remains is to negotiate, which means giving way, something that has not happened in French politics for many years.
The slowdown in the advance of the French populist right is added to the limited results obtained by the parties of that movement in the elections to the European Parliament, a month ago.
Despite the momentum that these sectors had been gaining in several countries, with harsh nationalist speeches, and in some cases winking at Vladimir Putin with whom they share their rejection of the European Union, in the votes at the beginning of June they did not get more than 150 of the 720 seats in the continental parliament.
In contrast, the alliance of socialists and social democrats (centre-left), centrists from the Renew group, and centre-right members of the European People’s Party, won nearly 400 seats and revalidated the same majorities with which they had been governing, led by the centre-right German Ursula von der Leyen, who is going to be re-elected as president of the European Commission.
Vladimir Putin’s hand affected Le Pen in France
The message posted on X on Monday by Polish Prime Minister Tusk spoke of “disappointment in Moscow and relief in kyiv,” the capital of Ukraine. He was referring to an episode that made a lot of noise in France and across Europe last week, and which affected the chances of Le Pen’s party.
Indeed, the RN was not only harmed by Macron’s electoral operation with left-wing forces to block Le Pen and her supporters.
Also the racist and homophobic statements of some of its candidates, as well as an ill-advised proposal from the party’s number two, Jordan Bardella, in the sense of not granting access to certain public offices to French citizens with a second nationality.
But, above all, – there are hugs that suffocate – he was harmed by the support that came from Moscow.
The people of France seek a sovereign foreign policy that serves their national interests and breaks with the dictates of Washington and Brussels.
Earlier this week, the Russian Foreign Ministry weighed in on the French campaign. Andrei Nastasin, spokesman for Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, posted a photo of Le Pen on the X network, with a telling caption: “The people of France seek a sovereign foreign policy that serves their national interests and breaks away from the dictates of Washington and Brussels.”
This nod from Russia served to remind Le Pen’s opponents that the Moscow-based First Czech Russia Bank, whose owner is very close to Putin, granted a multimillion-dollar loan to the RN campaign in 2017, when Le Pen was defeated by Macron in the current president’s first election.
Since the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, several far-right parties in Hungary, Poland, Germany and other countries have tried to justify Putin’s reasons for attacking Ukraine by saying that the war was the result of a provocation by the United States, the European Union and NATO, the military organisation that links Washington with its European allies.
But they also began to question the support of Western governments to Ukraine in the form of arms, ammunition and money. Some voices in the French RN echoed this.
To a greater or lesser extent, this stance affected everyone. The only populist right-wing party to make clear its support for Ukraine, and for the backing given to kyiv by the EU and NATO, was Brothers of Italy, the group led by Giorgia Meloni.
And thanks to this, the leader won the lessons, winning over conservative voters who were attracted by her proposals, but who see Putin as an enemy of Europe and democracy.
Once she became head of government in 2022, Meloni maintained her pro-Ukraine and anti-Putin stance. She has also distanced herself from Le Pen, the German far right and the Kremlin’s main ally in the EU, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.
A broad swath of voters is attracted by the anti-immigration rhetoric of Le Pen and Bardella, because they are convinced, rightly or wrongly, of the risks that such immigration entails (…) At the same time, this swath of voters is frightened by the fact that the populist right has ties to Putin.
“A large segment of voters are attracted by the anti-immigration discourse of Le Pen and Bardella, because they are convinced, rightly or wrongly, of the risks that such immigration entails,” a European diplomatic source told EL TIEMPO, adding, however, that “at the same time, this segment of voters is afraid that the populist right has ties to Putin.”
According to official data, the RN lost half a million votes between the first and second round.
On Monday afternoon, Bruno Bilde, a member of parliament who is close to Le Pen, called on his party to examine its conscience: “We cannot continue like this, we are obliged to give them assurances (to the voters), but we have had (among the candidates) some divisive profiles, even some very disturbing ones”, all in reference to those who made racist speeches or criticised France’s support for Ukraine.
A long negotiation
The setback in the rise of the RN, the party that a few days ago was aiming to obtain an absolute majority, leaves a National Assembly divided into three more or less equal blocks, each one incapable of governing alone, and with the aggravating factor of being all very little inclined to political negotiation.
The RN wants to consolidate itself as an opposition, and hopes that this will increase its chances of winning the 2027 presidential elections, since despite its setback in the second round and being far from an absolute majority, it obtained 10 million votes out of a total of 29 million.
The NFP’s left is tied to a radical programme that, according to its main leaders, is not negotiable. And in the centre, the Macronists are looking left and right, and cannot find anyone to sit down with to discuss a possible coalition.
As for the president, Macron took a high-risk gamble by dissolving the Assembly a month ago and calling elections, and he managed to save face. As the analyst explained on Monday, The country From Madrid, Marc Bassets, Macron emerged “bruised” but alive and “will be decisive for a possible grand coalition government.”
Outgoing Prime Minister Gabriel Attal resigned on Monday. Macron told him to stay in office for now to ensure the government runs smoothly, as the Olympic Games start in 18 days.
The president knows that the interim period could last for weeks: even if the left-wing bloc – the one with the most seats – presents a candidate for prime minister, he would not have majority support in the assembly.
Others, such as the Macronist MP Yaël Braun-Pivet, are proposing a “centrist bloc” between Macronism, the moderate right of LR and the Socialist Party, the least radical of the left, something similar to the alliance that controls, with an absolute majority, the European Parliament. But LR has said that it will not negotiate coalitions, and the Socialists have promised to remain faithful to the left-wing alliance.
On July 18, the new National Assembly will be installed and only then will the first clues of what may happen in France appear. The only thing that is clear is that at some point the various forces will have to open negotiations, as is successfully happening in several neighbouring countries accustomed to coalition governments, such as Italy, Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands.
On Monday, on LCI television, former minister Francois Bayrou, leader of MoDem, one of the three forces of Macronism, said: “The message of the voters is a rejection of a way of governing against each other, which we have practiced for years, and an invitation to move to a way of working together, with each other.”
MAURICIO VARGAS
Senior analyst
TIME
[email protected] / Instagram @mvargaslinares
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