Barely forty-eight hours after the results of the legislative elections, Macronie is still looking for the miracle recipe. In a country accustomed for decades to a concentration of power in the hands of a single camp – that of the winner of the sacrosanct presidential election – the loss of the absolute majority for the executive shakes up the political class. How can the head of state go about governing? 20 minutes lists the options on Emmanuel Macron’s table.
The à la carte option: individual poaching
To solve this puzzle and fill the void left by the 44 seats missing from his majority, Emmanuel Macron can draw on the turbulent history of the Fifth Republic. In 1988, the Socialist Party (PS) lacked 15 votes to have an absolute majority in the National Assembly. To govern without turbulence, the Prime Minister at the time, a certain Michel Rocard, chose to rely on a “stereo majority”: sometimes with the Communists, sometimes with the centrists.
” It was hell “, remembers in Point John Paul Huchon, then chief of staff at Matignon. François Mitterrand had individually poached several centrist tenors (Jean-Marie Rausch, mayor of Metz, or Jean-Pierre Soissons, president of the Burgundy region, etc.) to appoint them to the government. Better: about forty deputies had broken away from the UDF group to sit in the “Union du center” group, which worked occasionally with the government. It was the “opening”, theorized by Mitterrand and Rocard.
A strategy that could inspire the executive? “Individual poaching is not excluded,” assured a government source on Monday. Sunday evening, the LREM deputy from Paris Sylvain Maillard even launched, to seduce: “Being an opposition deputy is not always funny”. But the task promises to be complex: “We are not naive, we know that the majority plans to poach certain elected officials. Their goal is to plug the holes. If it was a matter of finding 3 or 4 additional chosen ones, it could work. But here, we are talking about forty seats! It seems badly embarked, ”says the LR deputy for the Channel, Philippe Gosselin. And unlike Rocard between 1988 and 1991, the government will not be able to use 49-3 28 times, which allows texts to be passed in force. Since 2008, the sulphurous article can only be used twice per session, including once for the finance bill.
The Ambassador’s Option: Drawing inspiration from the European Parliament’s Art of Compromise
Another solution envisaged: negotiation on a case-by-case basis to obtain an absolute majority at each examination of the text. This “compromise” policy prevails, for example, within the European Parliament. “No group is in the majority in Strasbourg, so for a text to have a chance of passing, three major groups must agree. Most of the time, it is played between the center right, the social democratic group and the centrists. The deputies obviously remain free to vote, but with each project, you have to seek a new majority, ”explains to 20 minutes MEP Nathalie Loiseau (Renew Europe).
A strategy which, according to her, requires “respect” and “dialogue”. “You have to be prepared not to get everything you wanted to have. It’s all about listening to each other and agreeing on compromises that are acceptable to all,” she continues. With one exception, however, continues the MEP: “What I am describing works by excluding the extreme right group. In the European Parliament there is a ‘cordon sanitaire’. Pro-EU groups refuse to make compromises with a group hostile to the very idea of European construction”.
The contractual option: the government pact with another party
There then remains the option of a “pact” or an “alliance” with the other groups who came just behind the presidential formation. An eventuality which seems – for the moment – unlikely to listen to the LR deputies or member of the Nupes. “We campaigned within the framework of the New Popular Union and on a shared program. We will continue to wear it, ”warns the socialist Pierre Jouvet who participated in the negotiations to form this unprecedented coalition. Same story on the side of the new deputy for Mantes-la-Jolie, Benjamin Lucas, from the environmental pole: “If tomorrow they propose a blocking of the price of gasoline downwards, great, I vote. If there is the increase in the Smic, I am. But if it’s just ‘Macron-light’ it remains incredibly brutal”. On the government side, we still want to see in the few turbulences on the left after the elections a slim hope of detaching the PS and EELV from LFI.
On the right, LR boss Christian Jacob purely and firmly rejected this scenario: “No question of a pact, coalition or agreement of any kind”. In the ranks of his formation, the deputies are keen to maintain their status as “opponent”: “We were elected in opposition to Macron, it is not to go and get together with him once the ballot is over. We are not intended to be the gallows that supports the hangman’s noose, ”sweeps Pierre-Henri Dumont, re-elected Sunday in Pas-de-Calais.
The care bear option: national union with Switzerland
In barely two days, the French National Assembly has taken on the appearance of the Swiss National Council: a pivotal centre, a right with limited strength and a powerful left and extreme right. What inspires the establishment of a government of national unity, from the left to the extreme right, as with our Swiss or Italian neighbors? This is what the former LR deputy, Julien Aubert, eliminated in the first round of the legislative elections proposes: “I believe that we must involve everyone in a government by trying to find a consensus”. For him, it would be dangerous to exclude Nupes and RN, “the two winners of the election”. The risk, according to him: to strengthen them.
“Frankly, I do not believe it for a second, have you seen the postures of LFI and the RN? “, blows a ministerial adviser, estimating a national union “impossible with such high extremes”. If the search for a parliamentary compromise is already undermining French political culture fed to the majority fact, imagining national unity, no, there, really, is too much.