France’s early parliamentary elections are among the most important for France and Europe in decades, with the far-right National Rally (RN) party likely to win a majority in parliament and take power.
The two-vote election will take place on June 30 and July 7. How will the election be conducted, what is at stake and what will be the outcome?
What is this story and why does it matter?
French President Emmanuel Macron has surprised almost everyone, including most of his own party members, by calling for early parliamentary elections after his centrist Renaissance party suffered a crushing defeat in the European Parliament elections to Marine Le Pen’s RN party.
No French president has ever dissolved parliament for a party with only 15% approval rating, and the RN, which Le Pen has spent years flushing out toxins and won more than 31% of the EU vote, seems highly likely to gain more seats.
If the RN does well enough to win an absolute majority in the National Assembly, the consequences could be dramatic: Macron would have to appoint an RN prime minister and most of France’s domestic policy would be run by the far-right party.
How are elections conducted?
Parliamentary elections in France are usually held every five years. The next one is scheduled for 2027, about a month after the next presidential election. Macron is ineligible to run in that election because he has already served two terms.
The 577 members of Parliament (or Knesset members) are elected by universal suffrage with a two-round simple majority system: to win on the first round, a candidate must receive at least 50% of the total votes cast and enjoy the support of at least 25% of registered voters (hence voter turnout is important).
If no candidate reaches that number, the top two vote-getters, plus any other candidate who receives at least 12.5% of the total number of registered voters, advance to a second round of voting seven days later. In the second round, the candidate with the most votes is elected.
Typically, only a small number of MPs are elected in the first round. Most second round elections are two-candidate elections, but depending on turnout, three or four candidates may participate, leaving room for strategic agreements between parties to withdraw.
The system was designed to make it harder for candidates from parties at either end of the political spectrum to win, but due to the party’s increasing mainstreaming over the past two decades, the current parliament includes 88 RN members (290 are needed to achieve a majority).
What is the role of Congress, the government and the president?
According to the French Constitution, the government “determines and implements national policy”, parliament can pass laws and overthrow the government, and the head of state is the arbiter who ensures “the normal functioning of public power”.
The president, as guarantor of “national independence, territorial integrity and respect for treaties,” is responsible for foreign, European and defense policy, while the government implements domestic policies with or without the support of parliament.
This means that pensions, unemployment benefits, education, taxes, immigration and citizenship requirements, civil service hiring, law and order, and employment law all fall in principle under the purview of Parliament and the government.
By convention, and because he does not want his government to be toppled by a vote of no confidence or parliamentary censure, the president always appoints a prime minister and cabinet that can command a majority in the lower house.
This arrangement works relatively smoothly when the president and the majority in Congress are politically aligned. When they are not (known as coexistence), the situation becomes more difficult. It is difficult to imagine a more intense coexistence. than Macron and the RN majority.
Who are the candidates and what are their chances?
Macron’s 170-plus-member Renaissance group is the largest in parliament and is a centrist, pro-European and pro-business party, but a series of unpopular reforms has seen its approval rating, like that of the president, fall – to 19 percent.
The main opposition party, the RN, has been disciplined since winning the 2022 general election, but despite the normalization, at its core it remains a populist, nationalist, far-right party with a “people first” agenda and billions of dollars of unfunded spending for the French people. Opinion polls give it 33% support.
The New Popular Front (NFP) is said to be a left-wing/green coalition made up of Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s far-left party, Unbowed France (LFI), the Socialist Party (PS), the Communist Party, and the Green Party (EELV). Although the two parties do not necessarily agree on their views, they have agreed to field one candidate in each constituency. If the party acts in unison, opinion polls suggest it could reach 30% of the votes.
Jacques Chirac and Nicolas Sarkozy’s centre-right Party of the Republic (LR), which has 68 members of parliament, has been thrown into turmoil by its leader, Eric Ciotti, promising to sign an electoral pact with the RN (whereby the two parties would field joint candidates or agree not to oppose each other), a move most party members strongly oppose; opinion polls show it at 7%.
What will be the outcome?
The two-round electoral system makes it difficult to estimate the exact number of seats, but experts predict that the RN could almost triple its number of MPs but would likely fall short of a majority, while Renaissance could see its number of seats halved.
That would mean Macron would face a more divided and hostile Parliament over the next three years, forcing him to make difficult deals with the opposition to form a government and pass bills, and almost certainly stalling legislation.
That would be a major problem for France, but perhaps less damaging than if the RN had a supermajority, control of parliament and perhaps a prime minister under its 28-year-old leader, Jordan Bardella, who would be tasked with pushing through a domestic agenda.
This could include increasing public spending, expelling more immigrants, halting family reunification, reversing plans to increase gasoline prices, privatizing public television and radio, etc. Other plans, including “people first,” could hit constitutional roadblocks.
The repercussions would be felt across Europe: While the president would nominally retain foreign policy authority, measures such as aid to Ukraine could be put at risk because they require parliamentary support to fund the aid as part of the French budget.
