The French capital will host the Olympic Games in August, but much more will be at stake in July. After a nightmare election night for Macron, without achieving Olympic minimums, the President of the Republic dissolved the National Assembly and called electionsinterrupting the mandate that would end in 2027.
How dramatic were the European election results that justified a national reading of this level and such consequences? In choosing the 81 French MEPs, Le Pen’s National Regrouping was the big winner of the night, with more than 30% of the votes and 30 mandates that will integrate the political group Identity and Democracy, on the most right-wing pole of the European Parliament. .
The Besoin d’Europe coalition, driven by Macron’s Renascenla, obtained less than half the votes and only 13 MEPs, less than what European liberals needed to reinforce their vitality – yet the combination The results in the hemicycle allow them to be important in the formation of moderate majorities.
It is also worth highlighting the results of other national forces, such as the Socialists, who got closer and achieved the same number of mandates (13). Mélenchon’s Unsubmissive France is close to 10% and reaches 9 MEPs for the European Left, the Republicans continue without reaffirming themselves autonomously, with 6 MEPs for the PPE, and the Reconquista coalition of Zemmour, belonging to the ECR, gets the same number of MEPs as the Greens (5), despite fewer votes.
The parties of the leaders of the two largest countries were weakened, as Scholz’s SPD, as well as the parties of his semaphore coalition, FDP (liberals) and Greens, fell behind the extreme right of the AfD and very distant from former Chancellor Merkel’s CDU/CSU, the largest opposition party. The difference is that there is more than an imaginary line between the romanticism of daydreams and the pragmatism of a rationalized system.
Scholz is Prime Minister of a parliamentary system, with his coalition having a majority in the Bundestag, Macron is President in a system with a strong Presidential bias, and the dissolution of a chamber of Parliament where is not a majority and does not affect his own mandate until 2027, which he will not be able to renew. The Paris-Berlin axis is weakened, but it will not be the European vision that seeks legitimacy in Macron’s eyes.
It’s true that Macron always tried to pass himself off as Schumann, but he never went beyond a little De Gaulle. The assumption of its European agenda and the leadership perspectives of the European political axis, and with Brexit, in part, also of Defense, were a lot of fruit and little grapes. Now, in the land of good wine, he wants to demonstrate that even washing the baskets means harvest.
An ambitious politician, he does not want to be a diminished President. It doesn’t just want to fly, but to have the name of an airport. He designs great works, without masons to execute them, as Macron is not an 18th century Freemason, nor a garçon follow the demands of the streets. After changing the party system in France, he follows in the footsteps of those who reformed the political system.
If in Portugal we are used to dissolutions, in France this is the sixth time that the mechanism of article 12 of the Constitution has been used. It was exactly De Gaulle who debuted in this use in 1962, after a motion of no confidence in Pompidou, winning a majority in elections. Later, in the face of the visible protests of May 1968, he again provoked elections that reinforced his position.
Mitterrand also twice successfully used this power, first when he was elected in 1981, to secure a left-wing majority, and in 1988 to end cohabitation, albeit with a majority of seven deputies. Chirac did not have the same luck in 1997, when he wanted to reinforce his majority: the victory of the left-wing coalition led to a cohabitation with Lionel Jospin, who had narrowly been defeated in the Presidential elections. .
Based on Chirac’s mistake, Macron managed to keep this operation secret at its core with the intention of it being successful, taking the opposition by surprise. The rush is so great that the dates chosen are the earliest possible (June 30th and July 7th), leaving little preparation time for the remaining parties who did not anticipate them, despite the demand, as Sunak did in the United Kingdom, for different reasons and means.
The two-round system does not favor extremist parties, on the assumption that voters vote for the candidate they least dislike and who antagonizes the opposite pole to theirs. Out of 577 seats, Le Pen’s party only secured 88 in 2022, and Mélenchon’s just 75. Macron’s coalition was 40 short of an absolute majority.
The French President will certainly have ordered a poll before causing this situation, but his belief in a majority that despises the extreme right will only be verified with the elections and the composition that of a new hemicycle. A more united popular front on the left and the growing success of new bets by Le Pen’s party, such as its Benjamin and new 28-year-old leader Jordan Bardella, could bring a bitter outcome to the center.
Macron knows that it is like the sports brand of the same name, it is not Adidas or Nike, but it is more reliable than the white brand. He knows that his policy is not as green or red as some sectors demand, but it is clearer than the white supremacy that others advertise. We know that we will always have Paris as the political center of France and our continent, but the doubt remains as to how strong the Élysée is and whether the regime’s pinnacle will accelerate the fall of its structure.
