The French parliamentary election saw unexpected results, with the left New Popular Front and Macron’s centrist “Ensemble” Party reaching 1st and 2nd place respectively pushing back on the rise of the far-right National Rally. The result was largely surprising due to the fact that Le Pen and Bardella’s National Rally remains the country’s most popular political force and issues of migration, social unrest, inflation, and unemployment have all driven the French electorate more towards the right end of the political spectrum.
Despite all this, centrist and leftist parties have managed to sustain the rise of the right through implementing, frankly speaking, undemocratic meddling in the second round of the election. The particularities of the French electoral system meant that only 78 deputies were elected in the first round despite the National Rally getting a plurality of votes in most constituencies. Due to this fact, most of the constituencies held a second round of voting with participation of the two best performing candidates in the first round as well as all those who reached the 12,5% of the vote threshold.
The 2024 election was unprecedented in nature. After the first round, 311 constituencies headed to three-way runoffs as well as 5 constituencies – to four-way runoffs. This is unheard of, as the previous 2022 election saw only 8 so-called triangulaires and no quadrangulaires were necessary ever since the 1973 legislative election. Even though the electorate remained rather divided, Macron’s “Ensemble” and the left New Popular Front decided to tactically withdraw their candidacies from the runoff election, ultimately leaving only 89 three-way and 2 four-way runoffs. This helped them consolidate the French electorate against the far-right, ultimately pushing the National Rally to third place.
However, France has simply shot itself in the foot, as there is absolutely no chance that these political forces can form a stable government. In this sense, there has been a sort of italicization of French politics. Italy has long suffered from its instability and inability to form resilient government, and France has seemingly taken this burden from it. Macron has already asked Prime Minister Gabriel Attal to keep his responsibilities until the new government is formed, but the prospects are rather grim.
The left-wing coalition that has won the election is extremely divided, as they cannot even agree on one particular leader who can become the next Prime Minister. Members of the France Unbowed are pushing for a hard-left figure, reminiscent of Jean-Luc Mélenchon. More moderate members of the alliance have called for former president François Hollande to assume this office. Ultimately, there is no consensus between the political parties, as some of them welcome cooperation with Macron’s centrist alliance and others strongly oppose to it.
In the absence of a clear majority government, France is doomed for an institutional deadlock. The French Constitution does not impose any specific deadlines for forming a government, but no legislative or regulatory text can be adopted in the absence of one. If the situation remains the same for a whole year, the National Assembly may be subject to dissolution.
In other cases, a minority government may be formed, but it will have to seek compromise with other political forces to pass legislation on a case-by-case basis. Alternatively, France can get some lessons from Italy in this sense and appoint a technical government to manage the country integrated by ministers with no party affiliation, similar to the case of Mario Draghi’s government in 2021-2022 Italy.
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