Macron's belly is attacked? There is a threat from outside Mellon, and there is also a hidden crisis within the alliance

The Paper's special contributor Zhang Yutao

"[I'm getting closer and closer to) the Palais Martignion, not farther and farther away." The day after the first round of voting in the legislative elections ended, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the leader of France's radical left party, confidently told reporters.

On June 12, 2022, local time, in Paris, France, the leader of a far-left party in France and a member of the French Parliament, Jean-Luc Mélangcheon. Mark Visual China Figure

On 12 June, France held the first round of voting for the legislative elections to elect members of the National Assembly, and the second round of voting will be held on 19 June. In the first round of the presidential election held a month ago, the elderly who missed out on the far-right candidate Marine Le Pen by less than 2 percent and failed to make it to the final race were getting closer and closer to his goal of becoming prime minister at the time, at least numerically.

According to the final result of the French Ministry of the Interior after counting all the votes cast in the first round of voting in the legislative election, the Left Alliance led by Mérancheon, the Nouvelle Union populaire écologique et sociale (NUPES), received 25.7% of the vote, a 0.1% gap behind the electoral coalition that supported President Macron "Together!" ”（Ensemble !）。 According to Nupes' own statistics, they received 26.11% of the vote, even surpassing the current parliamentary majority of 25.88% of the vote.

Mei Langxiong, who once held aloft the "Selected Works of Mao Zedong" at the event site, successfully avenged the presidential election through this election. By pushing for the formation of an electoral coalition, he integrated the forces of the left that had never been united during the presidential election, united his "La France insoumise", the Parti socilaiste, which contributed two presidents to the French Fifth Republic, and the Europe-Ecologie Les, which has gained more influence among young people with the awakening of environmental awareness Verts), and parti communiste français, which played an extraordinary role in this election.

Can Méron-s ambitions be realized?

Méron-sur-mer also used his high percentage of votes in the first round of the presidential election to push himself to the forefront of the stage, becoming the nominal leader of the French left coalition and occupying the center of public opinion after the presidential election. In the coalition's negotiations, he not only made his programme the basis of a common programme, but also forced his former opponents to accept constituency allocations determined by his party.

Even Marine Le Pen, who competed with Macron for the presidency in the second round of the presidential election, was eclipsed in front of him. Although the latter's party received 18.68% of the vote in this election, and even hopes to have an independent party group in parliament, its influence at the level of public opinion is far less than that of Mérancheon and Nupes.

Of course, Méron-sur-Merant's ambitions clearly go beyond that. When his old rival Macron and far-right leader Marina Le Pen were still fighting each other for the presidency between the two rounds of voting in the presidential election, he affectionately asked in the interview that "I implore the French to elect me prime minister." Using the National Assembly elections, he hopes that his party can become the majority party in parliament, obstructing the vote of specific proposals of Macron's government in parliament; And in this way, Macron was given an unruly prime minister, which became an obstacle to his governance process.

Perhaps such a wish would be less legally reliable. On the one hand, the semi-presidential system of the French Fifth Republic determined that the position of Prime Minister was not elected by the people, but appointed by the President; At the same time, according to French authoritative poll data, although more than half of the French people do not want Macron, the "Jupiter-like president" (Editor's note: Jupiter is the king of the gods in ancient Roman mythology) to monopolize the parliamentary majority in the second term, only 31% of the French will accept if Méranzin is involved as prime minister.

The shadow of left-right co-governance

According to projections after the end of the first round, in the National Assembly with a total of 577 seats, pro-Macron's party will win 255 to 310 seats in parliament, while Nupes will replace the Republican Party as the largest opposition in parliament with 150 to 220 seats. This means that Macron is likely to lose his absolute majority in parliament and have only a relative majority. Faced with a menacing left-wing electoral coalition, Macron will need to seek the support of a politically closer Republican Party (Les Républicains) if he wants his proposal to pass smoothly in parliament.

Because the French constitution stipulates that the French president is not allowed to have a third term, Macron, who hoped to show his fists in the second term, would face obstacles if he lost an absolute majority in parliament. Since winning re-election, Macron has not personally campaigned for his party's legislative elections for a long time. Admittedly, he wanted to use his presidency to dilute the political implications of the elections and to rightfully obtain an absolute majority in Parliament, as had been the practice of the Fifth Republic. But such a strategy clearly did not work.

Charles De Gaulle, the founder of the French Fifth Republic, learned the lessons of parliamentary government since the Third Republic, created a semi-presidential system, strengthened the powers of the president and the government, and ensured that the will of the president and his appointed government could pass the parliamentary vote relatively smoothly because the president's party generally had a majority in parliament. However, with three cohabitations in 1986, 1993 and 1997, when there was a situation in which the president's party belonged to and the parliamentary majority party, France passed a constitutional amendment in 2002 to shorten the presidential term from seven to five years, and scheduled legislative elections after the presidential election to reduce the probability of left-right co-governance.

After the constitutional amendment, in the four legislative elections from 2002 to 2017, the party from which the president came from often relied on the popularity accumulated in the presidential election to become the parliamentary majority through the legislative election. This also explains Macron's "slackness" after winning the presidential election to some extent. Of course, this "slackness" can also be understood as some degree of disdain for the challenger.

Final stage

On the other hand, on the side of Macron's opponents, Méron-starred not only began to prepare for the legislative election very early, but only after the results of the first round came out, he began a new round of offensive against the Macron camp. In a television interview on June 13, he said Macron's government would raise the consumption tax in general during his second term, thereby increasing revenue by 80 billion euros to bring France into line with the EU's debt standards for member states. On the one hand, Europe faces the threat of inflation due to the impact of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, and the purchasing power of ordinary French people has been a hot issue recently. The increase in consumption tax will be directly reflected in the expenditure of every ordinary French household.

Bruno Le Maire, the economy minister in the new government, was quick to clarify that the government's policy has been to cut taxes further and will firmly protect the purchasing power of the French. He also criticized Mélenchon's conclusion for ignoring France's economic growth and the resulting increase in the tax base, while crudely linking the growth of government revenues with tax increases. But it is undeniable that Mei Langxiong's sentence, or a casual golden sentence, or a well-planned propaganda offensive with advisers, has undoubtedly won himself exposure once again.

Macron's side finally put down his body in the final stage before the second round of the legislative election and entered the campaign. Before boarding a special plane to Romania to pay tribute to French army soldiers deployed in the country, he delivered a brief speech on the tarmac. In his speech, he called on the French to provide France with a "solid (parliamentary) majority" through a second round of voting in the upcoming legislative elections to further reforms.

Such a statement may also be a last resort. Once he fails to secure a parliamentary majority, Macron faces more than all kinds of obstruction from the opposition in parliament. Moreover, according to the results of the first round of voting, three government ministers in their respective constituencies are at risk of being eliminated in the second round, notably such important figures as Amélie de Montchalin, the minister of environmental protection, and Clément Beaune, the representative of European affairs. According to the previous statement of the presidential office, these ministers who have not been elected to the parliament will leave the government in accordance with the tradition of the republic.

For Macron, who is about to officially begin his second and final presidential term, there is more to worry about having to unite with the Republican Party because his party has failed to achieve a parliamentary majority. And there is also a crisis lurking within his alliance – will former Prime Minister Edouard Phillipe and his ally François Beyrou further reveal their personal ambitions in his second term, paving the way for the post-Macron era to oppose him on major issues? The second round of voting in the June 19 legislative election will determine not only the distribution of seats in Parliament, but also the direction of France in the next five years.

(Yutao Zhang, Graduate Student, School of Journalism, Sciences Po)

Responsible editor: Zhu Zhengyong Photo editor: Jin Jie

Proofreader: Shi Gong