Emmanuel Macron put to the test of the relative majority

Emmanuel Macron put to the test of the relative majority

After the second round of the legislative elections, Emmanuel Macron’s five-year term completely changes its appearance. The president did not obtain an absolute majority in the National Assembly. La Nupes becomes the first parliamentary opposition force, the National Rally reaches an unprecedented score and Les Républicains limit damage. The President of the Republic will have to make compromises to govern. Emmanuel Macron is entering an unprecedented zone of turbulence.

Emmanuel Macron’s second five-year term really begins now and promises to be difficult. Admittedly, Together!, the coalition which brings together La République en Marche, François Bayrou’s MoDem and Edouard Philippe’s Horizon, comes first, but it does not have the means to govern alone, because its score of 245 seats places it very far from an absolute majority. In less than two months, Emmanuel Macron has succeeded in being the first president re-elected outside cohabitation and the one to whom the French will not have given the means to govern.

This result represents a real setback for Emmanuel Macron who had tried to weigh in the battle between the two towers by calling on the French to give him a ” solid majority “. Some of his relatives and early supporters such as Richard Ferrand, the president of the outgoing National Assembly or Christophe Castaner, the boss of the En Marche group but also ministers, Amélie de Montchalin, Brigitte Bourguignon and Justine Benin are beaten. These last three will therefore have to resign from their ministerial functions.

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Building a Majority of Action »

To govern, Emmanuel Macron will therefore have to compose and find alliances to pass his reforms. Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne, who succeeded in getting elected in Calvados, took note of this situation on Sunday evening. unpublished » and affirmed that it was necessary « build a majority of action in other words, make compromises. With whom ? Probably first with Les Républicains who, after the disaster of the presidential election, managed to keep a group of 61 deputies.

Is a government agreement possible with the presidential party which has already plundered in their ranks during the previous five-year term? Some are calling for it on the right, but LR boss Christian Jacob appeared to shut the door, saying the group would stay in “ opposition “.

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Five-year storm warning

The disavowal of the French is all the more significant for Emmanuel Macron as these legislative elections perk up the left which he had believed to bury after 2017 and at the same time devote the anchoring of the National Rally against which he wanted to be a bulwark. The Nupes, electoral alliance around Jean-Luc Mélenchon, becomes the first opposition force in the hemicycle. And the RN breaks the parliamentary glass ceiling by succeeding in obtaining more deputies than it ever had. A situation which gives the Assembly an unprecedented physiognomy and promises heated debates during which the majority will be under pressure.

Emmanuel Macron’s second term will therefore not look like the first. Exit the Jupiterian presidency in the comfort of an absolute majority. Sunday’s results sound like a storm warning for the five-year term. Emmanuel Macron will have to learn from this with the formation of a new government. The question is how the president will take this political configuration into account in the reshuffle that must take place and whether he will be able to keep Élisabeth Borne Prime Minister.

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