President Emmanuel Macron threw French politics into disarray this month when he unexpectedly called for snap elections.
The surprise move came after his party was battered by the far right in European Parliament elections. Mr. Macron dissolved the lower house of France’s Parliament and said the first round of legislative elections would be held on June 30.
France now finds itself in unpredictable territory, with the future of Mr. Macron’s second term potentially at stake after one of the shortest election campaigns in modern French history.
Here is what you need to know about the snap election.
What happened?
France’s far-right, anti-immigrant National Rally party, led by Marine Le Pen and her popular protégé, Jordan Bardella, surged to first place in elections for the European Parliament, while the centrist coalition led by Mr. Macron’s Renaissance party came in a distant second. Mr. Macron acknowledged the crushing defeat in a televised broadcast to the nation.
“France needs a clear majority to move forward with serenity and harmony,” Mr. Macron said, explaining why he had decided to call for legislative elections.
That involved taking the extreme step of dissolving the 577-seat National Assembly, a presidential prerogative in France. Mr. Macron is the first president to do so since 1997.
Why did Macron call for snap elections?
When Mr. Macron was elected to a second term in 2022, his party failed to win an outright majority. The centrist coalition he formed has since governed with a slim majority — but struggled to pass certain bills without support from the opposition.
Mr. Macron was under no obligation to dissolve Parliament, even if the European vote left him a reduced figure with three years remaining in his presidential term.
But he believed that a dissolution had become inevitable — opposition lawmakers were threatening to topple his government in the fall — and that a snap election was the only way to respect the will of the people. Jolting the country with a sudden election was also a way to present voters with what he says is a stark choice between him or the extremes of the far right and the far left.
“This dissolution was the only possible choice,” Mr. Macron wrote in a letter to French voters on Sunday.
The move is seen as a risky gamble: If the National Rally gets a majority, Mr. Macron will confront a Parliament hostile to everything he believes in. After a yearslong effort to rebrand, the nationalist far right has never been closer to governing France.
“We are ready,” Mr. Bardella, the National Rally president, said this week.
What’s at stake?
The presidency is France’s most powerful political office, with broad abilities to govern by decree. But the approval of Parliament, and especially the 577-seat National Assembly, is required on most big domestic policy changes and key pieces of legislation, like spending bills or amendments to the Constitution.
Unlike the Senate, France’s other house of Parliament, the National Assembly is elected directly by the people and can topple a French cabinet with a no-confidence vote. It also has more leeway to legislate and typically gets the final word if the two houses disagree on a bill.
Crucially, the composition of the National Assembly determines how France is governed.
If Mr. Macron is unable to muster a strong parliamentary majority, he could find himself in a rare “cohabitation” scenario where the presidency and the National Assembly are on opposing political sides.
He would then be compelled to choose a prime minister of a different political party, which could block much of his domestic agenda. Presidents traditionally retain control over foreign policy and defense matters in such scenarios, but France’s Constitution does not always offer clear guidelines.
Mr. Macron’s party and its centrist allies currently hold 250 seats in the National Assembly, short of the 289 required for an absolute majority. The National Rally party holds 88 seats, while the mainstream conservative Republicans have 61. A tenuous alliance of far-left, Socialist and Green lawmakers holds 149 seats. The remainder are held by smaller groups or lawmakers not affiliated with any party.
When is France’s election?
The elections will be held in two rounds — the first on June 30 and the second on July 7.
How will the vote work?
France’s 577 electoral districts — one for each seat — cover the mainland, overseas departments and territories, as well as French citizens living abroad. Unlike many of its European neighbors, France awards seats to candidates who get the most ballots in each district; seats are not based on a proportion of the total vote across the country.
That means there will be 577 separate races, each with local dynamics and quirks.
Any number of candidates can compete in the first round in each district, but there are specific thresholds to reach the second round.
While in most cases the runoff will feature the top two vote-getters, it might feature three or even four candidates if they are able to get a number of votes equal to at least 12.5 percent of registered voters. That is uncommon, but it is made more likely by low abstention — and pollsters are predicting a much higher participation rate than usual in this election.
Whoever wins the most votes in the runoff wins the race. (Under some conditions, a candidate who gets more than 50 percent of the vote in the first round wins outright.)
What has happened so far?
The elections have already profoundly rocked French politics, fostering rare unity on the left, creating chaos on the mainstream right and fraying Mr. Macron’s centrist alliance.
Antisemitism has been a major theme, as have concerns over the parties’ economic plans. The race has focused attention on France’s fragile finances and the prospect of legislative gridlock that could undermine attempts to address it.
The National Rally has a comfortable lead in the latest polls with roughly 36 percent. It is unclear if the party will win enough seats to get an absolute majority and form a government, but it has already secured some allies after the leader of the conservative Republican party broke a longstanding taboo and announced an alliance.
With little time to campaign, parties on the left scrambled to unite as they did in 2022. France Unbowed, a hard-left party, joined with the Socialists, Greens and Communists to create an electoral alliance called the New Popular Front. The parties have avoided competing candidacies in each district and have vowed to govern together if they are able to form a majority. The alliance is polling in second place so far.
Mr. Macron’s party and its centrist allies are in a distant third place, and they are widely expected to lose many of their seats.
If none of the parties are able to form a working majority, France may face months of political turmoil or gridlock. Mr. Macron, who has ruled out resigning, cannot call new legislative elections for another year.
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