PARIS: French President Emmanuel Macron on Monday lost his parliamentary majority after major election gains by a newly formed left-wing alliance and the far right, in a stunning blow to his plans for major second-term reform.
The result from Sunday’s second round poll threw French politics into turmoil, raising the prospect of a paralysed legislature or messy coalitions with Macron forced to reach out to new allies.
Macron, 44, now also risks being distracted by domestic problems as he seeks to play a prominent role in putting an end to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and as a key statesman in the EU.
Macron’s “Together” coalition will still be the biggest party in the next National Assembly. But with 245 seats, according to full interior ministry results announced in the early hours of Monday, it is well short of the 289 seats needed for a majority in the 577-member chamber.
“This situation constitutes a risk for our country, given the challenges that we have to confront,” Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne said in a televised statement, vowing: “We will work from tomorrow to build a working majority.”
The outcome severely tarnished Macron’s April presidential election victory when he defeated the far-right to be the first French president to win a second term in over two decades.
“It’s a turning point for his image of invincibility,” said Bruno Cautres, a researcher at the Centre for Political Research of Sciences Po.
Le Monde daily headlined on its website: “Macron faces the risk of political paralysis,” while the Le Figaro daily said the results raised the spectre of a “stillborn new mandate”.
The new left-wing coalition NUPES under 70-year-old hard-left figurehead Jean-Luc Melenchon won 135 seats.
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The coalition, formed in May after the left splintered for April’s presidential elections, brings together Socialists, the hard left, Communists and greens.
Melenchon called Sunday’s results “above all an electoral failure” for Macron.
“The rout of the presidential party is total and there will be no majority” in parliament, he told cheering supporters in Paris.
A prominent MP from Melenchon’s party, Alexis Corbiere, said the result meant Macron’s plan to raise the French retirement age to 65 had been “sunk”.
Far-right leader Marine Le Pen’s National Rally party made huge gains and will send 89 MPs to the new parliament, making it the biggest rightwing force in parliament ahead of the traditional right The Republicans (LR).
Le Pen hailed a historic result for her party, saying it would send “by far” its highest number of MPs to the next National Assembly.
Macron had hoped to stamp his second term with an ambitious programme of tax cuts, welfare reform and raising the retirement age. All that is now in question.
“This will complicate the reforms… It will be much more difficult to govern,” said Dominique Rousseau, professor of law at Paris Pantheon-Sorbonne University.
“The slap,” said the headline in the left-leaning Liberation’s Monday edition, adding the results represented the “fall” of Macron’s way of governing.
