French politics was thrown into disarray on Sunday when President Emmanuel Macron unexpectedly called early elections.
The surprising move comes at a time when his party Far-right blow in European electionsMacron dissolved the lower house of France's parliament and said the first round of legislative elections would be held on June 30.
France is now in an unpredictable situation, and the future of Macron's second term may be at stake. With less than a month to the election, the parties are busy selecting candidates, perfecting their campaign strategies, and some are even forming alliances.
Here's what you need to know about the early election.
what happened?
France's far-right, anti-immigrant National Rally party is led by Marine Le Pen and her Jordan Badellajumped to first place European Parliament elections Macron's centrist Ennahda party came in second with 31.4 percent of the vote on Sunday. Macron's centrist Ennahda party came in second with 14.6 percent.
That evening, Macron acknowledged the crushing defeat in a televised address to the nation.
Explaining his decision to hold legislative elections, Macron said: “France needs a clear majority to move forward in calm and harmony.”
The resolution involves the extremely rare move of dissolving the 577-seat National Assembly, a prerogative of the French president. Macron is the first president to do so since 1997.
Why did he do that?
When Mr. Macron Re-election in 2022his party failed to win an outright majority. The centrist coalition he assembled has since governed with a slim majority — but has struggled to pass some bills without opposition support.
Even if European polls show Macron’s popularity slipping with three years left in his presidency, he is under no obligation to dissolve parliament. Analysts are still parsing his motives, though many suspect he sees dissolving parliament as inevitable — conservative lawmakers have threatened to overthrow his government in the fall. Shocking the country with a surprise election could also be a way for Macron to prevent the opposition from organizing — and give voters a hard choice between him and the far right.
The move was seen as a gamble: If the National Rally repeats its performance in national elections, France could become nearly ungovernable, and Macron would face a parliament hostile to everything he believes in.
Ms Le Pen welcomed the results and expressed confidence her party could win a majority. “We are ready to turn the country around,” she told cheering supporters in Paris on Sunday night.
What are the dangers?
The president is the most powerful political office in France, with broad powers to govern by decree. However, most major domestic policy changes and key legislation (such as spending bills or Constitutional Amendment.
Unlike the Senate, the other chamber of the French parliament, the National Assembly is directly elected by the people and can overthrow the French cabinet through a vote of no confidence. It also has greater freedom to legislate and challenge the executive branch, and usually has the final say if the two chambers disagree on a bill.
Macron's party and its centrist allies currently hold 250 seats in the National Assembly, short of the 289 needed for an absolute majority. The National Rally holds 88 seats, while the mainstream conservative Republicans hold 61. A fragile alliance of far-left, Socialist and Green lawmakers holds 149 seats. The rest are held by smaller groups or lawmakers who do not belong to any party.
How will voting take place?
The election for the 577 seats in the National Assembly will be held in two rounds – the first on June 30 and the second on July 7.
France has 577 constituencies, each with one seat, covering metropolitan France, overseas departments and territories, as well as French citizens living abroad. Unlike many of its European neighbors, France awards seats to the candidate who receives the most votes in each constituency, rather than based on a proportion of the total national vote.
This means there will be 577 separate elections, each with its own local dynamics and characteristics – unlike the European Parliament elections, where each party fields a national list of candidates.
Any number of candidates can run in the first round of elections in each constituency, but there are specific thresholds for entering the second round. While in most cases the runoff election will be between the two candidates with the most votes, in rare cases there may be three or even four candidates. The person who receives the most votes in the runoff election wins the election. (In some cases, the candidate who receives more than 50% of the votes in the first round of elections wins outright.)
What happens next?
Because the election results have just been announced, there are no reliable polls yet.
Despite the National Rally's victory in the European elections, it is unclear whether it will win more seats in the lower house of France's parliament.
“It is difficult to project the results of the European elections onto the legislative elections,” said Luc Rouban, a senior researcher at the Center for Political Studies at Sciences Po in Paris. “It is not certain that the National Rally will have the same success.”
With little time left for campaigning, left parties are struggling to unite Just like they did in 2022 Avoid having competing candidates in every constituency. Unity of the French left is elusiveit is unclear whether the two sides can reach such an agreement.
If Macron fails to secure a parliamentary majority, he could be trapped in a rare “coexistence” situation in which the presidency and the National Assembly stand on opposing political positions.
In that case, Macron would be forced to choose a prime minister from a different party — which could thwart much of his domestic agenda. Foreign policy, the prerogative of the president, would theoretically remain largely unaffected.
