This is a first in the history of the Fifth Republic: at the end of the most powerful electoral sequence, a presidential and legislative elections, the result does not achieve consensus. If everyone has won, democracy has lost. One more effort and it feels like the United States. Emmanuel Macron, on December 31, started from the observation that “confidence in the vitality of our democratic life has waned” to commit: “We will have to launch the necessary adjustments to our institutions and to our public and civic life and (…) to build a better functioning of the powers and a more frequent association of our fellow citizens.”
The Elysée is in the process of stalling the device. According to our information, the Head of State should propose a two-tier commission: around him, Yaël Braun-Pivet, Gérard Larcher and Thierry Beaudet, the presidents of the Assembly, the Senate and the CESE, as well as some constitutionalists; below, the representatives of the parliamentary groups. The presence of the former Presidents of the Republic Nicolas Sarkozy and François Hollande, who have already made their visions known, would not necessarily be a plus in reaching a compromise, the idea has therefore been abandoned; and the presence of the former presidents of the National Assembly and the Senate would come up against a problem of balance: on the side of the Upper Chamber, only Jean-Pierre Bel is still alive, and far from France.
If the stakes are not small – how to save politics when it no longer prints – the room for maneuver seems narrow. Even almost nil on the purely constitutional ground, where it takes a valid vote of the two chambers then a majority of three-fifths to succeed. Even the reform of the CJR (Court of Justice of the Republic) is no longer consensual, whereas it once seemed to be. “The more time passes, the more pessimistic I am”, notes a tenor of the majority.
A president very attached to the Fifth Republic
It will therefore be necessary to show imagination by moving away from the Constitution and valuing the democratic issue in relation to the institutional issue. The method of voting in the legislative elections – Emmanuel Macron voted for proportional representation in 2017 as in 2022, but the debate never took place; the manner in which Parliament exercises its functions; the structuring of political parties; the nagging question of the accumulation of mandates: there are certainly areas to explore.
But in this regard, Emmanuel Macron’s past is often a liability. Not in intentions or grand declarations, but in practice. The words are there, as always. The expression “With you”, the promise of a horizontal presidency touted by campaign posters in the spring of 2022, has reappeared in greetings but smells so much like com. The CNR (National Refoundation Council) as an illustration of the change in method? The tenors of the majority, from François Bayrou to Edouard Philippe via Richard Ferrand, discovered this new emblem of participatory democracy by reading the newspapers.
How surprising then that their first reaction was to say: “Let him manage with his finds”? The attitude in November of the President of the Republic vis-à-vis a bill – a text of parliamentary initiative – prohibiting bullfighting is also surprising: Emmanuel Macron had announced the day before his examination in the Hemicycle that there would be no ban, which placed him far from his prerogatives… For those who doubt it, the framework for the work is fixed: the Head of State is very attached to the Fifth Republic and n don’t mean to be unfaithful to him.