It was a bad night for France's ruling Socialist Party and a very good night for the opposition alliance of the right-wing UMP and the centrist UDI. The Right and its allies won control of 25 département or county councils from the Left in Sunday's local elections and will now control 66 councils. A clear victory for sure - but who should take the credit? One of the key factors in the Right's win was its alliance with France's centrist parties, a strategy advocated in particular by former prime minister and current mayor of Bordeaux Alain Juppé. In any case, the Right had already done well in the local and European elections in 2014, well before Nicolas Sarkozy's comeback as president of the UMP. But as Ellen Salvi reports, none of this has stopped the former president and his supporters from claiming that he is the man who has transformed the Right's electoral fortunes.
The first round of voting in France's 'départementales' or county elections on Sunday threw up some important results. While it did not do as well as opinion polls had predicted, failing to become France's 'leading party', the far-right National Front still picked up around 25% of the vote. Meanwhile the ruling Socialist Party only attracted just over 21% support in an election in which it has traditionally performed well. A third noteworthy outcome was the victory of the alliance between the centre-right UDI and the right-wing UMP, led by Nicolas Sarkozy. Here Mediapart journalists examine the political situation ahead of next Sunday's second and decisive round. First Stéphane Alliès argues that leaders of the Socialist Party, and in particular the prime minister Manuel Valls, are deluding themselves in thinking that the party “held up” well in the vote. Then Ellen Salvi analyses the performance of the centre-right, where the victory of the UDI-UMP alliance has rather overshadowed any success on the part of former president Sarkozy.
Despite a low-key start to the campaign to elect councils for France's départements or counties later this month, new rules for these elections do herald genuine changes in French local politics. For the first time there will be strict male-female parity among those elected, the new councillors will be noticeably younger and the age-old tradition of combining both a local and a parliamentary post is starting to fade. But as Mathieu Magnaudeix reports, this welcome progress risks being largely undermined by the fact that the départements themselves, which date from the time of the French Revolution, are increasingly being marginalised by the ascendancy of regions and metropolitan areas. Indeed, voters will go to the polls not even knowing what powers the councillors they elect will have in the future.
Frédéric Chatillon, who runs a company that provides services for Le Pen's Front National party, has been placed under formal investigation for fraud, misuse of corporate assets, laundering the proceeds of the misuse of corporate assets, forgery and use of false instruments. Chatillon, who was held in custody for 48 hours, is an old friend of Marine Le Pen and the former head of an extreme-right student organisation. The allegations stem from an investigation into the financing of the far-right party's local election campaign in 2011, parliamentary elections in 2012 and the presidential campaign in the same year. Marine Le Pen says she is “not legally involved” in the affair.
For the last three years France's upper chamber of parliament, the Senate, has been under the political control of the Left, a rarity in the history of the Fifth Republic. On Sunday that brief interlude ended when, as expected, the Right regained control of the chamber during partial elections, with the centre-right faring especially well. And for the first time the far-right Front National gained entry to the Senate, picking up two seats. Meanwhile the ruling Socialist Party took comfort from the fact that a number of its candidates fared better than expected, though there were some symbolic defeats for key allies of President François Hollande. Mathieu Magnaudeix analyses the significance of the weekend's elections.
The free trade treaty currently being hammered out between the European Union and the United States is a major issue in this week’s elections of members of the European Parliament, which in France will be held on Sunday. For this year also sees the departure of EU Commission president José Manuel Barroso, and for the first time the new head of this key EU body will be appointed from the political grouping that does best in this week’s continent-wide elections. Here, Mediapart's Brussels correspondent Ludovic Lamant questions all of the parties’ declared candidates for the post of Commission president - Martin Schulz, Guy Verhofstadt, Alexis Tsipras, José Bové and Jean-Claude Juncker – and hears their conflicting views on the transatlantic free trade deal.
