An era has ended in France.
President Emmanuel Macron’s seven-year dominance of national politics came to an end when his party suffered a crushing defeat in the first round of parliamentary elections on Sunday, dissolving not only parliament through a snap vote but also the centrist movement known as Macronism.
The far-right National Rally won a third of the vote, but that does not guarantee it an outright majority in a runoff six days later, though it will likely come close. But Macron risked everything by calling the election only to doom himself to marginalization, with a chance of just a third of the seats his party currently holds.
“The decision to dissolve the National Assembly effectively puts an end to the political landscape that was created after the 2017 presidential election,” said Édouard Philippe, one of Macron’s former prime ministers.
In 2017, Macron, then 39, swept to power in a landslide, wielding the center-right Gaullists and the center-left Socialists (the mainstays of postwar France) in the name of a 21st-century pragmatic centrist. The strategy worked for a time, but Macron’s failure to build a credible moderate party has left him and a shrinking coterie of allies on opposite sides of the far left and right.
That stance, which sometimes worked to Macron’s advantage, has now unraveled in one of the most spectacular, self-inflicted failures in European politics in recent years.
Although the National Rally defeated Macron in the European Parliament elections, he did not call an election in the weeks before the Paris Olympics. Macron’s narrow victory is now defined as making it impossible for the National Rally led by Marine Le Pen to obtain an absolute majority in the National Assembly, even at the cost of ungovernable chaos, which reflects France’s current predicament.
“They are finished. I don’t see any room for them to maneuver,” Luc Rouban, a senior fellow at Sciences Po, said of Macron’s centrist movement.
Unlike Italy and Belgium, France does not have a culture of chronic anarchy. But the possibility of it is now emerging.
If the National Rally wins an outright majority, Macron will almost certainly have to accept Le Pen’s protégé, 28-year-old Jordan Bardella, as prime minister because the party would overthrow any other party. But Macron and Bardella, with their opposing views, would find themselves in an uncomfortable partnership.
Without such a National Rally majority, Mr Macron will face large far-right groups in parliament and a large left-wing and far-left coalition, both of which strongly oppose him. It is unclear how he will form a governing coalition. The only possibility may be some form of caretaker government led by technocrats, waiting for parliament to be dissolved again in a year, when the constitution will again allow it.
According to one opinion poll, the National Alliance and its allies have qualified for the second round of voting in more than 480 constituencies and are leading or have been elected outright in 297 of them. Franceinfo analysis of the resultsMacron’s centrist coalition, by contrast, will lose many of the 250 seats it has held since 2022, qualifying for runoffs in 319 constituencies and coming in ahead or outright elected in only 69 of them. A party needs 289 seats to have an absolute majority in parliament.
Macron’s Ennahda party urged its candidates to withdraw from some constituencies where they finished third in the first round of elections. The aim is to avoid splitting the vote and preventing the far right from winning an outright majority.
Yet another sign of division is the reluctance of some in the center to support the left over what they see as disastrous economic plans for Palestine and over comments by far-left leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon, whose enthusiastic support for the Palestinian cause has more than once seemed like a proxy for anti-Semitism.
“No one chose to dissolve Parliament,” Gabriel Attal, the outgoing prime minister and onetime Macron favorite, said pointedly on Monday. “But I refuse to become its victim.”
Macron must step down in 2027 after his term has expired, but he will remain president. If Bardella becomes prime minister, he will undoubtedly portray himself as the surviving bastion against the far right, which treats immigrants as second-class citizens.
But his authority over domestic policy will be limited and his voice on the international stage – traditionally the exclusive domain of French presidents – will be muted, particularly on EU issues, where the eurosceptic National Rally will do everything it can to return power from Brussels to the nation. Mr Macron has been a staunch advocate of what he calls “European power”.
Surprisingly, both Le Pen and Bardella chose to give their victory speeches on Sunday against a backdrop of the French flag, rather than the blue and gold European Union flag, which is flown at all French town halls and government offices, including the prime minister’s residence, the Palais Matignon, and the president’s Elysee Palace. It certainly suggests that international priorities are changing.
So why did Macron call the election?
Clearly, he miscalculated, especially on the left, which he thought would split between moderate socialists and Mélenchon’s “France Unbowed,” thus increasing his own party’s chances of reaching the second round. But that split never happened. Instead, the new Popular Front coalition of these left-wing parties won 27.99% of the vote, compared to Macron’s 20.04%, and secured a spot in more runoffs.
The second miscalculation was that Macron thought he could be a unifying figure despite the growing hostility he faced during his seven-year presidency. He wanted to represent the Republic and its values, against extremism. But too few voters were willing to accept that.
Instead, they seem alienated by his aloof and highly personal style of rule, as evidenced by his shocking decision to announce the election. The long-standing taboo against the National Alliance no longer applies.
“It’s a personal rejection,” said Jacques Rupnik, a political scientist. “People no longer want Macron to bring them together.”
If true, as it seems, it will be a crushing blow to Macron, a man with a brilliant mind, a wink and a lot of charm who has long believed he could convince anyone from Russian President Vladimir Putin to former U.S. President Donald Trump to agree with him. It hasn’t always worked, but his bold determination to break down political barriers has never waned.
He talked with Putin for months after the outbreak of the Ukrainian war in 2022, when few Western countries were willing to do so. This year, he did not rule out sending Western troops to Ukraine, an idea that almost all countries, including President Biden, rejected. He declared that Europe would face “death” if it did not begin to disengage from the United States, while many other European countries believed that distancing itself from its allies would be a death knell. Finally, on the advice of a small group of people, he called the election, shocking many ministers who saw it as suicidal.
“Macron thinks the house will burn down in three years,” said Nicole Bacharan, a writer and political scientist, referring to the likelihood that Le Pen will be elected in the 2027 presidential election. “So let’s burn it down now. And then we’ll see.”
France is a country with strong institutions, deep democratic traditions and a guaranteed rule of law. It will not be easily destroyed. As a permanent member of the UN Security Council and a nuclear power, France occupies an important position in international affairs, and even if domestic difficulties affect this position to some extent, France’s position will continue.
The French economy has attracted a flood of foreign investment in recent years, thanks in part to Macron’s policies, and unemployment has fallen. Although France’s national debt and budget deficit have risen to levels that have alarmed both the European Commission and rating agencies, the French economy appears more resilient than troubled Germany. No one driving through France would have the impression that it is on the brink of crisis.
Yet Macron has led France to a dangerous watershed. The National Rally has long been held back in politics for good reason, with its history of quasi-fascism (now disavowed) and its belief that immigration undermines the essence of the French nation. The party has provoked extreme reactions and evoked memories of the wartime collaborationist Vichy government.
Many of France’s Muslim minority, which numbers about five million, fear the National Rally’s rule. Overall, France is gripped by deep uncertainty.
“Burning down houses is dangerous,” Ms. Bacharan said, “and Mr. Macron should know that.”
