France learns a new word: ungovernable

Instead of France waking up on Monday to a country dominated by the far right, it became Italy, a country where only difficult parliamentary negotiations can ultimately produce a viable coalition government.

France voted no to Marine Le Pen’s anti-immigrant Rassemblement National party in parliamentary elections, another demonstration of its deep-seated opposition to nationalist adventures. It voted a resurgent left-wing party into first place that was far from empowering the left, and it shifted the country’s political heart from an all-powerful presidency to parliament.

With the Paris Olympics less than three weeks away and an August exodus to beaches or mountains a hallowed feature of French life, talks to form a government could stretch into the fall, when France needs a government to pass a budget. The election, which could have sparked a revolt, has resulted in a stalemate.

The New Popular Front, a resurgent but divided left-wing alliance, was the first to win about 180 seats in the National Assembly. It immediately demanded that President Emmanuel Macron ask it to form a government. It would choose a prime minister the following week.

This demand ignored several things. According to the Constitution, Mr. Macron chooses the prime minister. In the 577-seat National Assembly, the New Popular Front is about 100 seats short of a workable majority. It was not the left alliance’s program that won it all its seats, but a combination of it and a decision by centrists and the left to form a “Republican Front” of unity against the National Rally in the second round of voting.

Despite this, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the combative leader of the left, said he would not negotiate with potential coalition partners or change a single sentence in the left’s programme.

All this did not bode well for the lifting of the thick fog in which Macron’s early “clarification” election had shrouded Paris.

France, with its presidential system, does not have a culture of coalition-building compromise. “We don’t have that, we are a nation of would-be Napoleons,” said Nicole Bacharan, a political scientist.

The Napoleons will now have to deal with the details of a difficult negotiation over an agreed agenda between parties with very different views on national priorities.

The New Popular Front, for example, wants to lower the retirement age from 64 to 60, a year after Macron raised it from 62 to 64 after a bitter battle. Macron wants to prioritize reducing the budget deficit; the New Popular Front wants to raise the minimum wage and freeze energy and gas prices. Macron’s government passed an immigration law earlier this year that tightens the rules that allow foreigners to work, live and study in France. The left has promised to make the asylum process more generous.

The division of the National Assembly into three large blocs of left, centre and right did not provide an immediate basis for a working coalition.

Macron’s centrist bloc has about 160 lawmakers, down from 250, and the National Rally and its allies have about 140, up from 89. France has kept the far right out of power again, but has been unable to stem its rise, fueled by anger over immigration and rising living costs.

Mr Macron said after a meeting on Monday with Gabriel Attal, the prime minister, that he had asked him to remain in office “for the time being” to “ensure the stability of the country.” Mr Attal, once one of Mr Macron’s favorites, had offered his resignation.

Mr Attal broke away from Mr Macron, with the clear intention of joining the race to succeed him in 2027. In a pointed speech on Sunday evening, he said: “I have not chosen this dissolution” of the National Assembly. He continued: “Tonight begins a new era. From tomorrow, the centre of gravity of power, by the will of the French people, will be more than ever in the hands of Parliament.”

A more direct rebuke of Macron for his highly personal and top-down style of governance, in which he generally disapproved of the National Assembly, was hard to imagine, especially from a former disciple.

Mr Macron, whose term is limited and who is due to step down in 2027, has been largely silent in recent days, which is unusual. Although his party lost a third of its seats, the election was not the debacle that was widely expected for him. He escaped humiliation; he showed that a big victory for the Rassemblement National in the European Parliament would not inevitably lead to the same thing in a national election. That was no small feat.

Now he is expected to take the time to consult with the various parties of a broader centre to explore possible coalitions. “Calm” was the order of the day coming from the Élysée Palace, the seat of the presidency.

There are two red lines for the president: govern with Rassemblement National, whose young party leader Jordan Bardella had hoped to become prime minister, and with Mr. Mélenchon’s far-left France Unbowed party, which Mr. Macron has accused of anti-Semitism. He will try to persuade the moderate left, including Socialists and Greens, as well as mainstream conservatives, to join a coalition.

On Wednesday, Mr Macron will be in Washington for the NATO summit. This will be a way to show that his authority on the international stage, a traditional domain of French presidents, is undiminished and that France’s commitment to supporting Ukraine will not waver at a time when American political uncertainty is rampant.

If Mr Biden’s health is the talk of the town in Washington, Mr Macron’s wielding of power is the talk of the town in Paris. Will he now be forced to change course for Mr Attal’s “new era” centred on Parliament?

“Today,” said Raphael Glucksmann, a leading socialist, “we put an end to the Jupiter phase of the Fifth Republic.”

Mr. Macron used the word “Jupiterian” in 2016, before he became president, to describe his approach to government. A powerful wielder of almost godlike authority was more attractive to the French, he mused, than the “normal” presidency of François Hollande. The French, he suggested, are sensitive to the mysteries of great authority.

To some extent, it seems, based on Macron’s seven-year rule.

“We are in a divided assembly, so we have to behave like adults,” said Mr Glucksmann, who led a successful Socialist Party campaign in last month’s European Parliament elections. “That means we have to talk, we have to engage in dialogue and we have to accept that the National Assembly will be the heart of power.”

He described this as ‘a fundamental change in political culture’.

France Unbowed accounts for an estimated 75 of the New Popular Front’s 180 seats, the Socialists for about 65, the Greens for about 33 and the Communists for fewer than 10. Keeping the alliance together will be difficult, as Mr Glucksmann’s comments illustrated.

In theory, as a moderate party used to forming coalitions in the European Parliament, Mr Glucksmann could be a candidate for prime minister in a coalition that also includes the Socialists, the Greens, the Communists, Mr Macron’s centrist bloc and around 60 mainstream conservative lawmakers from the Republican Party.

But Mr Glucksmann’s approach and beliefs obviously clash with those of Mr Mélenchon, who rejects dialogue with potential partners, and they also clash with those of Mr Macron.

There is no compromise yet.

There is no easy way out of the post-election fog in France, even as the Olympic flame reaches the capital on July 14, France’s national day, when France commemorates the French Revolution and the beheading of the monarch.