President-elect Emmanuel Macron.
There is significant relief in many quarters that Emmanuel Macron, an independent, centrist candidate, was elected on Sunday as the eighth president of France’s six-decade-old Fifth Republic. While he handsomely beat far right contender Marine Le Pen, the country is in unchartered territory after the mainstream centre-right Republicans and centre-left Socialists failed to qualify.
A key concern centres on how effectively Macron will be able to govern. At 39, he is the youngest president the Fifth Republic has had, and his new political movement – En Marche! (Forward!) – has no seats in the legislature which is dominated by Socialists and Republicans. In January, Macron announced En Marche! would try to field candidates in all 577 constituencies in the legislative ballots on June 11 and 18, but the prospects of the movement securing a working majority (even potentially in an alliance with key blocs of lawmakers from one or more other parties) are uncertain.
This gives next month’s two-round legislative election more significance than usual. For much of the Fifth Republic, the incumbent president has enjoyed the support of a relatively secure legislative majority from their own party, yet in 2017 this is not assured. There are at least three scenarios of how it could play out.
The two most optimistic possibilities for Macron is that En Marche! either secures a working majority in June or forms the biggest group of legislators but not an absolute majority. The latter is the most likely outcome, and previously occurred in two earlier periods – from 1958 to 1962 and 1988 to 1993.
In this eventuality of no overall majority, the president’s handpicked prime minister may have limited latitude to move his agenda forward. Much would depend on the size of the pro-Macron forces in the legislature that emerge in June’s ballot, and whether En Marche! could co-operate with other parties – including the Socialists, given that Macron served as economy minister in president Francois Hollande’s Socialist cabinet.
The worst case scenario for Macron would be a hostile majority, which will make it hard to govern and potentially even offer up the prospect of political paralysis. This would leave much of Macron’s agenda stymied, if not dead on arrival, including his proposed labour law to try to reduce the unemployment rate of about 10% and his plan to cut public spending and re-industrialise France through innovation-led policies.
Should En Marche! not emerge as the largest single group in June’s elections, France would enter a period of “cohabitation”, which would require Macron to appoint a prime minister outside his party. There is again precedent for this- from 1986 to 1988, 1993 to 1995 and 1997 to 2002 under the presidencies of Socialist Francois Mitterrand and Republicans Jacques Chirac respectively. In these periods, the centre of gravity of domestic policy moved away from the president and into the hands of the prime minister and the majority party in parliament.
A key danger for Macron in this scenario is that he could well fail, politically, to realise the expectations that are held about his new centre ground presidency. Given the volatile mood of the French electorate, this could see in the second half of 2017 and beyond rising support for not just Le Pen but also the left.
Recent political historyis not promising for Macron: the last two presidents, Republicans Nicholas Sarkozy and Hollande, were unpopular one-term presidents despite enjoying a legislative majority. Hollande decided last year not to even seek re-election, the first incumbent not to try for a second term since the Fifth Republic was created in 1958.
If Macron’s presidency were to follow a similar pathway to his two predecessors, the public mood could turn against him rapidly. There is widespread anti-establishment anger fuelled by economic pain, which has seen the country suffer years of double digit unemployment (10%) and low growth (1.4% this year).
The primary beneficiaries of discontent with Macron in coming months could be Le Pen and/or hard left veteran Jean-Luc Melenchon, who finished fourth in last month’s first round presidential elections. Melenchon has created a new grassroots movement, La France Insoumise (Untamed France), and his candidacy was backed last month by the Communist Party.
Both Melenchon and Le Pen oppose the Euro single currency and are sceptical of the European Union. Moreover, both favour French withdrawal from Nato and warmer ties with Russia.
Although Le Pen was comprehensively beaten on Sunday, she may well re-emerge as a political threat to Macron and is young enough to run in several more presidential elections. She performed on Sunday significantly better than her father and former National Front leader, Jean Marie, who was crushed in 2002 when he reached the final round of that year’s presidential election against Chirac.
Then, Chirac won by more than 80%, the largest victory in a French presidential election. Le Pen has different positioning to her father, winning on Sunday about double his share of the vote in 2002, appealing not just to the far right but also some centre-right voters – and a slice of the left, that she presents herself as an anti-globalisation champion, including opposition to international trade.
Macron’s presidency will depend on next month’s legislative elections. If En Marche! can emerge as the largest single party, or secure a legislative majority, prospects of his agenda being enacted will increase.
Andrew Hammond is an Associate at LSE IDEAS at the London School of Economics