President Emmanuel Macron fights to salvage a functioning government, and his reform agenda

PARIS: President Emmanuel Macron made history in the French legislative elections on Sunday, just not in the way he hoped.

The 44-year-old centrist became the first president in decades to fail to garner an absolute majority in parliament, falling short of the 289-seat threshold. His alliance, however, will still remain the largest bloc.

That means that while Macron may be able to keep control of the executive branch, he will have a hard time passing legislation, putting much of his agenda in peril -- including plans to increase the retirement age and deliver tax reforms.

“This situation is a risk for our country given the challenges we are facing both nationally and internationally,” Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne said. “The right compromises must be built to act for France.”

French bonds fell at the open, sending 10-year borrowing costs as much as 6 basis points higher to 2.26%, while the euro rose 0.3% against the dollar to 1.0530. 

Macron’s alliance won 245 seats. The second-largest group in parliament is Nupes, a leftist coalition led by Jean-Luc Melenchon, which gets 131 lawmakers. The far-right National Rally fared much better than expected with 89 seats, while the center-right Republicans and their allies took 61.

The president’s cabinet will also be shuffled. Three ministers failed to be elected and officials in Macron’s office have previously said anyone in that position would have to relinquish their jobs. Ecology Minister Amelie de Montchalin said Sunday night that she would leave the government.

French Government Spokeswoman Olivia Gregoire said on Monday that the cabinet would be reshuffled “in the coming days.” She told France Inter radio “we don’t intend to leave a government lacking a certain number of members.” 

France’s current political system, known as the Fifth Republic, was set up by Charles de Gaulle in 1958 to avoid the disruptions from a parliamentary system that couldn’t create a stable majority. Socialist Michel Rocard, for instance, headed a government in the late 1980s that fell short of an outright majority, though his party and its allies were far closer to that than any group of parties is projected to be after Sunday’s election. 

Macron’s support base has shrunk after the past five years, with protests against his pension reform, social inequality and handling of the Covid-19 pandemic. His second term was already off to a rocky start, with allegations of sexual harassment against one of his ministers and criticism of the government’s policing doctrine after chaos at a football stadium sparked anger in the UK. 

The result pushes France into a situation that has become common across Europe with the emergence of new populists and environmental parties. Germany’s Olaf Scholz won last year’s election with the lowest share of the vote of any chancellor since the Federal Republic was founded. Spain’s two-party system has broken down over recent elections leaving Pedro Sanchez governing with a minority coalition while Italy, long the most unstable of Europe’s major countries, is governed by the technocrat Mario Draghi after its previous coalition collapsed in the midst of the pandemic.

Lisa Thomas-Darbois, a specialist in French politics at the Paris-based Institut Montaigne, said Macron won’t be able to lean on the extremes, whether it’s the far right or the far left, which will oppose pretty much systematically every proposition from the government.

But he could cobble together alliances on specific topics -- his position on raising the retirement age is similar to that of the center-right Republicans, for example.