Hear
PARIS.- Only a handful of seconds had passed after the verdict of the polls in the European elections was known yesterday when the Elysee Palace caused a first surprise by announcing Emmanuel Macron’s intervention before the French television cameras. According to members of his team, What the French president was about to say was “capable of making us forget the results.” Nothing was more true.
Given the historic performance of Marine Le Pen’s National Meeting (RN), the head of state announced the dissolution of the National Assembly and the call for legislative elections on June 30 and July 7.
“The extreme right is both the impoverishment of the French and the declassification of our country. I couldn’t, today, act as if nothing had happened“Macron said in a very brief message.
“To the growth of the extreme right is added a fever that has taken over the public and parliamentary debate in our country, a disorder that worries the French and sometimes shocks them,” he continued. “The dangers before us demand clarity in our debates, ambition for the country and respect for every French person. That is why I decided to give them the possibility again to decide our parliamentary future through voting. Tonight I will dissolve the National Assembly,” he declared.
Those words caused a real earthquake in the country. The last dissolution of the Chamber of Deputies had occurred in 1997. The then president, the conservative Jacques Chirac, even with a majority, hoped to complete his control over the Palais-Bourbon, seat of the Assembly. Terrible calculation, since he ended up forced to endure cohabitation with a socialist prime minister.
Today, the context is very different. From 2022, The presidential field is in an uncomfortable situation of relative majority, due to which the eventuality of a dissolution in order to get out of the political blockade returned again and again since the beginning of his second term. But if this scenario never materialized, it was because Renacimiento, the presidential party, and its allies knew that they had no chance of obtaining better results in the event of early legislative elections.
That situation did not change. But the European elections made it worse. National Meeting just obtained a historic result, by exceeding 31% of the votes. Even taking into account that this percentage contains only 50% of the registry, since the participation was barely 50%, The figure represents more than double that of the Renaissance list, led by the Macronist Valérie Hayer.
Jordan Bardella, head of the list of the extreme right, was not wrong. In his speech after the results, he specifically requested the dissolution of the Assembly. “At the risk of persevering in a democratic dead end, the president must submit to the spirit of the institutions“said the young president of RN.
“The objective is to return to the people and the democratic breathing,” Macron’s collaborators admitted yesterday morning in the Elysée. The president decided to dissolve due to the circumstances, but also after long reflection.
“This situation could end up being a source of frustration or resentment,” they added, emphasizing the absence of “democratic breathing” during this second five-year period, which must end in 2027.
But, Why did Emmanuel Macron decide to accede to the request of the extreme right?
Deliberately risking subjection to cohabitation With the extreme right, the president perhaps hopes to force RN to leave the comfortable position of opposition. By “forcing” them to govern until 2027 – in the event of victory in the legislative elections – Macron can hope that the exercise of power will reduce the party’s popularity. He could thus put Le Pen and his group in a position to defend the balance of government when the presidential elections arrive. A much more difficult position than that of an opponent, whose campaign only rests on promises.
At the same time, since Macron cannot aspire to a third term, his political family could emancipate itself from the status of “outgoing government” and appear as an alternative. As a kind of repetition – although larger and much more risky – of his own strategy, when he left the government of the socialist François Hollande early enough to distance himself and not feel responsible for his balance sheet.
This hypothesis – probably the most cynical – is not necessarily the only one. The president perhaps hopes that by calling these elections, he will shock the voters. During the European campaign, when the polls were already announcing the collapse of Renacimiento, Macron’s collaborators minimized the scenario, describing those elections as “an election where people protest, without saying anything about the national political power relations for 2027.”
By deciding to dissolve the Assembly, Macron may intend to prove through the ballot box that the French are not ready to be governed by the far right. If so, he will surely play the responsibility card of the Republican opposition parties, forcing them to unite to stop RN.
“We go to win. The republican forces can do it,” affirmed the president’s collaborators. “Our will is to go find a majority to be able to act. “The president does not subscribe at all to that logic (of cohabitation),” they insisted.
In any case, the risk assumed by the president is enormous. Macron knows it. And he said it during his message: “It is a serious and heavy decision. But above all, an act of trust.”
“In the coming days I will indicate the orientation that I believe is fair for our nation,” he added, before placing himself above the budding partisan fight, remembering that he is “the only one” who will not play anything in 2027. “My only ambition is to be useful to our country,” he concluded.
A country that, for the moment, has plunged into the unknown.
