When Emmanuel Macron called a shock election after the French far right’s victory in the 9 June European elections, he gambled on one of the shortest and most high-risk electoral campaigns in our country’s history. At a moment when the far right had just gained a record number of seats in the European parliament, the president’s unilateral and reckless act – deciding to dissolve parliament three years before elections were due – plunged the country into fear and uncertainty.
Macron was certainly not banking on the left forming a new alliance called the New Popular Front (NFP) and putting a solid programme together in record time to contest the elections. In the end, enough voters mobilised against the far right as a threat to the republic, and the election led to the consolidation of three parliamentary blocs in the national assembly. The NFP came first, beating Macron’s centre-right alliance, Ensemble, into second place. Marine Le Pen’s far-right Rassemblement National (the National Rally) came third.
The left alliance’s surprise victory brought a new sense of hope and relief across the country. One month on, however, millions of French people are feeling shortchanged as Macron basks in the glory of the Paris Olympics. Several trade unions and civil society organisations have since called for strike actions and demonstrations.
The president is perpetrating a political holdup, going against the will of the people by refusing to recognise that the next prime minister must come from the left. In any parliamentary democracy, the political force with the most elected representatives is allowed to form, and lead, a government. This is not the case in France, an anomaly in a region predominantly characterised by parliamentary democracies such as the UK, Spain and Germany.
There is a lot France could learn and replicate from countries whose parliaments carry more weight in the political system. Having campaigned in the French elections to represent French constituents living in northern Europe, I feel strongly that we should take more inspiration from electoral models in other European democracies.
With the National Rally, descended from a party founded by former members of the Waffen SS now more prominent than ever, it is time to break free from a political system that has proven its ineffectiveness in preventing the re-emergence of fascism.
Throughout history, France has modified its regime, starting from its First Republic during the French Revolution to the current Fifth Republic. Vichy’s dark era of collaborationism with Nazi Germany ended the Third Republic in 1940. The Fourth Republic, a continuation of the Third, suffered from many of the same issues. It was characterised by a period of great political instability (24 governments between 1946 and 1958) and rising divisions around colonial rule in Algeria. De Gaulle, who had led the Free French forces in the second world war, became provisional president of France in 1944. In 1946 he set out plans for a new constitution, with stronger executive powers that would allow the president to govern above party divisions. In 1958 the constitution of the Fifth Republic was approved by referendum and De Gaulle was elected president later that year. He held a firm grip on the country for the subsequent decade.
But the concentration and personification of power that characterises France’s current presidential system, while useful when De Gaulle established it in 1958, is now placing the country in a democratic crisis.
Macron, since he was first elected in 2017, has pushed the boundaries of presidential power to an extreme. He has compared himself to Jupiter, but more often comes across as the naked emperor in the tale of the emperor’s new clothes. His behaviour has rightly been described as “neo-Bonapartist” in reference to Napoleon. His political behaviour, manifested in his gamble on elections, is encouraged by the very nature of the Fifth Republic, as former president François Mitterrand pithily observed in his book The Permanent Coup d’État in 1964. Dissolving the national assembly and triggering elections before the end of the normal five-year term is a privilege conferred on the president by article 12 of the current constitution.
This is why we urgently need to build a new republic. A republic that would not rely on the whims of its president but one that would give much more weight to parliament, one that would be more proportional and more accountable to its people. The Fifth Republic’s erosion of democracy that is fuelling this fascist outgrowth must be replaced by the wisdom of crowds embodied in parliamentary regimes.
France’s institutional framework needs to change. But institutional change alone will not be enough. For France’s democratic renewal to be sustainable, and to avoid the far right coming to power, the left will need to show it can truly improve people’s lives with flagship measures such as increasing the minimum wage, investing in our hospitals and schools and insulating homes.
It will also need to reaffirm its attachment to the values of tolerance, inclusion and solidarity, and fight the far right’s ideology of hate and division, which is spreading in political discourse and in the media. The empire of radical rightwing billionaire Vincent Bolloré, which includes TV, radio and press outlets such as CNews, Europe 1 and the Journal du Dimanche, urgently needs further regulation despite a recent decision of the French media regulator curtailing the Vivendi group. Revelations of the far-right billionaire Pierre-Edouard Stérin’s Pericles plan to hijack media outlets such as Marianne in support of Le Pen’s party show that the issue of unelected oligarchs eager to help the far right’s advance could not be more pressing.
Today, the expectations of French voters, civil society actors and unions are high. Under the current system, it is up to the president to summon the leaders of the NFP’s constituent parties, recognise their victory and invite them to form a government under Lucie Castets. The left will also need to put disagreements and egos aside and agree to keep working together under a united front.
Any other scenario would, without a doubt, pave the way for a far-right victory in the next presidential election in 2027. We have a small window of opportunity to bring about institutional and social change. Let’s seize it.
Charlotte Minvielle stood as the French parliamentary candidate for the New Popular Front in northern Europe. She is the co-chair of the French Green party in the UK
