Having been repudiated at the ballot box in the second round of France's legislative elections on Sunday, Presidential Emmanuel Macron is now faced with an unprecedented political and institutional crisis. Without a working majority in the National Assembly, there looks to be no obvious solutions for him at the start of his second term, unless there is a major but improbable realignment of political groups. Analysis by political correspondent Ilyes Ramdani.
Shortly after winning the presidential election in 2017 Emmanuel Macron won a thumping majority at elections for the National Assembly, enabling him to push through his programme of reforms. Now, two months after his re-election as president in April, the head of state has suffered his first electoral setback at a national level. In the first round of voting in legislative elections on Sunday Macron's coalition of parties attracted only a handful more votes than the united left alliance known as NUPES. Though the head of state's centre-right Ensemble alliance is well-placed to win the support of other voters in the decisive second round next Sunday June 19th, his supporters are nonetheless worried he could lose his overall majority in the National Assembly. Ilyes Ramdani reports.
A reform promoting “internal mobility” has just been introduced at France's Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The ostensible aim of Emmanuel Macron's measure is to make the French senior civil service more flexible and less elitist. However, many diplomats see the American-style reforms at the ministry as a pretext to enable the head of state to appoint his political friends or business executives to plum diplomatic posts. They also think the president is settling scores with the diplomatic corps, whom the Élysée royally detests. The depth of feeling at the ministry is so strong that trade unions representing diplomats have called for a strike on June 2nd. René Backmann reports.
After a delay of 26 days, on Friday May 20th Emmanuel Macron finally appointed the 27 members of the new government under recently-installed prime minister Élisabeth Borne. As Ilyes Ramdani reports, its composition is strikingly similar to the old government and is still anchored firmly to the right. Historian Pap Ndiaye, who was a surprise appointment as minister of education, represents something of an anomaly alongside the rest of the ministerial team.
Élisabeth Borne was on Monday named as France’s new prime minister, replacing Jean Castex under who she served for the last two years as labour minister. Borne, 61, is the second-ever woman to lead a French government, after Édith Cresson who was briefly in office 30 years ago. The future of Borne and her government now hangs on the results of legislative elections to be held next month, when it remains to be seen whether Macron’s Renaissance party can maintain a working majority in parliament. Dan Israel and Ilyes Ramdani analyse Borne’s track record, and the challenges she now faces.
An analysis of the final results of last Sunday's presidential election shows the extent to which Emmanuel Macron's electoral strategy paid off handsomely, while at the same time indicating that support for the far-right is now firmly entrenched across the country. It is now abundantly clear that France has entered a new political era. But the results also highlight the risk that whole sections of the population could be left stranded without proper political representation for years to come. Fabien Escalona and Donatien Huet report.
The strategy that Emmanuel Macron deployed for five years has paid handsome dividends electorally, as shown by his win over Marine Le Pen with around 58% of the vote. But in democratic terms that strategy has produced nothing but failure. As Ellen Salvi reports in the aftermath of the president's re-election, the country's divisions have never been so deep.
As far-right leader Marine Le Pen approaches what is predicted will be a tightly fought duel with Emmanuel Macron in the April 24th final round of France’s presidential elections, the credibility of her capacity to govern is under heightened scrutiny, not least over her ability to form a government. Lucie Delaporte reports.
The results of the first round of France’s presidential elections on Sunday have demonstrated that the political earthquake of the elections in 2017, when Emmanuel Macron arrived in office, was no passing aberration. Instead, the voting last weekend confirmed the endurance of a new electoral landscape in France, with the old mainstream socialist and conservative parties of government left in tatters, replaced by a centre-right behind Macron, a strengthened far-right and a Left dominated by its ‘Green-and-red’ movements. This analysis by Fabien Escalona and Donatien Huet.
France goes to the polls on Sunday in the first round of presidential elections, when the two highest-placed candidates out of a total of 12 will move on to the final deciding round on April 24th. While opinion surveys see a tightening race, with the far-right's Marine Le Pen closing in on Emmanuel Macron's lead, and radical-left leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon lying third, one of the key factors that can sway the outcome is turnout, a regular imponderable in French elections and which, as in the past, may yet upset poll predictions. Mathilde Goanec reports.
