June 14, 2024

What’s Going on in France?!

The elections for the eurodeputies, held among all the member states on June 9, 2024, did not greatly change the composition of the European Parliament. Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, proclaimed that “the center held,” and that was true. If the center right gained a few seats, that was largely because of their gains in Germany and France.

The French had known for weeks that the National Rally list, headed by Jordan Bardella, would win; he was at roughly 33% in all the many polls taken during the campaign, and came in at a little over 31%. Jordan Bardella, elected head of the National Rally in 2022 (Marine Le Pen leads the large RN caucus in the National Assembly), is 28 years old: fresh-faced, polite, “the ideal son-in-law.” Initially picked to head the European list in 2024 (at the age of 23) and carefully mentored for leadership by Marine Le Pen, he has become the most popular member of the party.

In second place was Macron’s Ensemble coalition, which received a little over 14% of the vote. In third, and with a major comeback, was the Socialist Party, which received nearly 14%; followed by La France Insoumise, with nearly 10%; Les Républicains, with about 7%; Éric Zemmour’s far right Reconquête with 5%; Les Écologistes with a little over 5%; and the Communist Party with only 2%. (The exact figures are not yet posted on the Ministry of the Interior website.)

Just before the elections were called at 8 p.m., there was an announcement that Macron would be speaking later that evening. After several of the victory speeches, Macron announced that he was dissolving the National Assembly. New elections would be held on June 30 (first round) and July 7 (the second round or run-off elections, in constituencies where no one received more than 50% of the vote). Some complained about the haste, but of course the Olympic Games are starting in late July; presumably all, or perhaps nothing, will be settled by then. Macron had told virtually no one, apparently, except his closest circle; the announcement came as a shock, even to members of his party.

The Far Right

Bardella and Éric Ciotti, the head of Les Républicains (the traditional Conservative party), crafted a hasty alliance, which was a great surprise to LRs, since Ciotti had announced it without consultation with the rest of the leadership. An alliance, in this case, means that they will not put up candidates against each other in any given constituency; it’s not entirely spelled out yet whether that would translate into a voting alliance in the Assembly, but it probably would. The rest of the leadership hastily expelled Ciotti from the party, while he has continued to insist that he is still the president; there are, he reminded them, rules and procedures to follow, though he seemed to forget about that when he announced the accord.

In making this alliance, Ciotti was breaking the “cordon sanitaire” of President Jacques Chirac, who put together several conservative parties, including the Gaullist RPR, to form the Union of the Popular/Presidential Majority, called UMP, now Les Républicains; Chirac prohibited any coalitions with the then-National Front. That bright line between the two parties–LR and FN/RN–had become harder to maintain, as immigration, mostly from North and Central Africa and the Middle East, became a major issue. Ciotti claims that there are about 60 LR candidates who will stay with him and accept support from the RN; Bardella has said that the RN will not run any candidate against an LR incumbent (about 60 of them, though not all of the seated deputies are in favor of the alliance). For many LRs, however, the thought of the party of General de Gaulle in alliance with the party of Jean-Marie Le Pen, which emerged from an unpleasant postwar stew of neo-Nazis, antisemites, and collaborationists, is nauseating.

Bardella has refused an alliance with Reconquête. It is the far right party founded just before the 2022 presidential election by right-wing television personality Éric Zemmour. Zemmour, like the RN, focuses on immigration and the Great Replacement theory. The party also is more restrictive on social issues, taking a stand against homosexuality, same-sex marriage, and in-vitro fertilization, none of which the RN opposes; Reconquête also stresses the Christian heritage of France more overtly than the RN. (Their opposition to in-vitro fertilization is in large part because it allows gay couples to become parents.)

Reconquête’s situation is complicated by the fact that Jean-Marie’s granddaughter and Marine’s niece, Marion Maréchal, declined to support her aunt for president in 2022 and became vice-president of Reconquête instead. In the recent European elections, she led the Reconquête list. She tried to negotiate Reconquête’s entry, for at least some candidates, into the National Rally’s campaign, and Bardella refused, citing as a reason the harsh and divisive language used by her in the recent European campaign. Maréchal, in a press release, then criticized Zemmour for his harshness; he immediately expelled her from Reconquête, calling her a traitor and backstabber. She has urged support of Ciotti’s rump LRs, and has announced her intention to serve in the European Parliament. But she is, for now, without a party; and altogether she has wrecked the reputation she had (from her campaign for the regional elections in 2015) as a smart, tough politician.

The Left

The task for the Left is in some ways more simple. La France Insoumise, the Socialists, Les Écologistes, and the Communist Party had joined together during the National Assembly campaign in 2022 as NUPES (New Popular Environmental and Social Union). Many smaller Left parties are joining them: the New Anticapitalist party (NPA) is; Lutte Ouvrière (Workers’ Struggle) is not. But there were many hard feelings after 2022 because of the dominance of LFI in the coalition as well as dislike for the pro-Russian Jean-Luc Mélenchon; the Socialists especially were angry about their exclusion from many winnable constituencies that were given instead to LFI.

While the RN party has announced that Jordan Bardella will be the prime minister (if they win a majority), the Left has not announced their choice. Jean-Luc Mélenchon has refused to rule himself out. François Ruffin, also of La France Insoumise, announced some time ago his interest in running for president; and Fabien Roussel (Parti communiste français) has self-nominated. Mélenchon would turn many voters off; Roussel does not have a large enough independent constituency. Ruffin, on the other hand, would be interesting. He and Macron went to the same high school together; Ruffin was a couple of years ahead. Ruffin also intensely dislikes Macron. (He wrote an entire book, Ce pays que tu ne connais pas, in 2019, about how much he dislikes him.)

The Center?

Macron may be counting on the inability of the Left coalition to hold together, given their many internal divisions and resentments. He has won two elections by positioning himself as the bulwark against the RN, and he may be hoping that will happen again. But above all, Macron is a risk-taker, and those risks sometimes pay off. In 2016, he started his own microparty, En Marche; a little over a year later he was president, with an absolute majority in the National Assembly. As one prominent socialist said at the time, Macron recognized that 2016 was his kairos moment, when he seized his destiny in the face of all odds, and won. He may not win this time. But here are some of the scenarios:

The Left wins, and they are immediately torn apart by their internal divisions over Ukraine and Gaza, over diversity versus social class issues. The resentments of the Socialist Party against La France Insoumise are still strong, and may be reinforced, depending on how the districts are allocated among their candidates.

Or the Right wins, and they are forced to take action, rather than simply enjoy the right to criticize and complain; many people will be turned off by their harsh immigration policies, and Macron will be able to triangulate against his own prime minister. Instead of allowing the RN to coast into victory in 2027, the French people will have a foretaste of what a National Rally government would look like.

Or, finally, Macron could resign. The last president to call a snap election in France was Jacques Chirac, in 1997; he had to live with a Socialist prime minister, Lionel Jospin, for five long years. But in 2002, Chirac won a second term, and the Socialists were shut out of the presidency for another ten years. Macron will end his second and last term in 2027. The last president to resign was Charles de Gaulle, in 1969, after a policy referendum that he sponsored had failed to win approval. If Macron resigned, and since France has no office of vice president, there would have to be another presidential election within twenty to thirty-five days. Whoever is newly elected would serve a five year term; but that would mean that Macron would be eligible to run again in five years, since the constitution states that a French president can run for no more than two consecutive terms.

Macron has rolled the dice.

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The parties are building their websites to accommodate the New Popular Front, and will share the same policy documents. In the meantime, there are some interesting variations. This is evidently the Socialist Party video for the European elections, though with some old footage. The 2022 presidential candidate, Anne Hidalgo, who came in at 2%, is nowhere to be seen. Olivier Faure, the head of the party, is in contrast highly visible; he is the one in every frame, even in crowd scenes.

And here is Fabian Roussel of the Communist Party, demonstrating the “kitchen table issues” that they ran on. He is followed by Léon Deffontaines, who came in at 2%, a “new face” in the party, and also from Macron’s and Ruffin’s hometown of Amiens.