(CNN) The loss of the parliamentary majority in this weekend’s legislative elections is a huge blow to French President Emmanuel Macron.
While his central alliance, Ensemble !, won the largest share in Sunday’s second round of elections – winning 245 out of 577 seats – he was short of the 289 needed for a clear majority.
The Macron coalition will now try to build alliances in parliament so that it can pass legislation.
Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne said on Sunday night: “As of tomorrow, we will work on an action-oriented majority. There is no other option than that coalition government to guarantee the stability of our country and enact the necessary reforms.”
These reforms include raising the retirement age and having a more pro-business agenda, both of which were opposed across the political spectrum, including protests during Macron’s first term. He also wants to push for better integration within the European Union and has stood as the de facto leader of the bloc since former German Chancellor Angela Merkel left office last year.
Philippe Marlière, professor of French and European politics at University College London, believes, “Macron will try to rule through ad hoc alliances on certain issues,” but points out that opposition parties may want to stay and see if Macron dissolves parliament and “will have another. election in a year or two.”
Analysts have already described Sunday’s election result as a major personal failure for the French president – one that could ruin his legacy.
When Macron was first elected in 2017, he did so as an unknown relative, leading a political movement that seemed to come from nowhere and sweeping the traditional center of France left and right to the side.
“Macron’s goal was to depoliticise French politics, in a sense. It wanted a large center with left and right – wing people who would try to solve French problems with a non – partisan common sense,” Gérard said. Araud, a former French ambassador to the United States, told CNN.
“This instead created the impression that the alternatives are the true representative of Macron’s politicians from the left and right margins,” he said.
Araud’s analysis is difficult to dispute. The second largest political force now sitting at the French National Assembly is the left – wing coalition of the New Ecological and Social Union (NUPES), led by far – left figure Jean – Luc Mélenchon.
The third largest National Rally party far to the right is Marine Le Pen. Mac Pen was a rival to Macron in the second round of the April presidential election, in which she won 41% of the popular vote.
Aurelien Mondon, a senior lecturer at the University of Bath, who specializes in European remote politics and radicalization, says that perhaps Macron’s greatest failure is the normalization of Le Pen and the wider far-right.
“The idea of a large center created by a horseshoe, with Macron and its centralization alongside far right and far left, meant that Le Pen could place itself in the same category as NUPES,” Mondon explains.
While NUPES has a number of roots, including Mélenchon himself, its membership includes Greens and Socialists, who have been French mainstream parties for many years.
Mondon says the highest number of seats in parliament will allow Le Pen to claim this result “as an effective victory and to be able to think that the far right is marching closer to power in France and across the region another part of Europe ”.
There is no doubt that Macron’s historic victory was 2017. In a world of Brexit and Donald Trump, his central victory, on behalf of Europe, was hailed by many who feared the political instability being felt around the world. .
That victory is felt a long time ago and it is difficult to see what will happen to Macron’s political center when it is no longer in power. It is even more difficult to predict what will happen to those voters who oppose Macron after his departure: whether they can be pushed back into the center of French politics, or whether they will flow further to the left and right margins. ?
