Status: 06/20/2022 02:13 a.m
President Macron’s camp loses an absolute majority in the second round of parliamentary elections in France. The edges, on the other hand, increase. A smack follow me.
The chairman of the left-green alliance NUPES, left-wing man Jean-Luc Mélenchon, rented the Elysées Montmartre event hall in Paris for the election party, not without a wink. Alluding to the official residence of the President.
“The situation is totally unexpected and absolutely unprecedented: the defeat of the presidential party is total and there is no real majority,” he told cheering supporters. “We do not for a moment give up the ambition to rule this country and lead it to another horizon! Let us always listen carefully to what our people say, because they have lost their patience!”
Mélenchon announced that the greater the challenges, such as climate change or financial problems, the more opportunities there were to find answers and particularly encouraged young people. But without his allies, without the Communists, Socialists and Greens, Mélenchon’s LFI party alone is probably a few seats behind Marine Le Pen’s right-wing Rassemblement National party.
Sabine Rau, ARD Paris, “This result is an absolute debacle for Macron”
daily topics 10:45 p.m., 19.6.2022
Strong gains for Le Pen
Beaming, she steps up to the microphones of a boulodrome, a hall for the popular sport of boules, in her constituency in north-eastern France, which has won by a landslide.
“The people have decided to send the strongest group of deputies from the Rassemblement National in the history of our political family to the Assemblée, which will become a little more national,” said Le Pen. “We have made Emmanuel Macron a minority president and we are preserving the country a head of state outside of any control. We want to be a responsible and constructive opposition, because our only compass is the interest of France and that of the French people.”
She then names immigration, security and unemployment as the most important issues. The reaction of the presidential camp comes late. No wonder. Ministers don’t win their constituencies and are now forced to resign. The previous parliamentary speaker and the parliamentary group leader of the Macron party will also lose their mandates. One smack after the other.
French President Macron misses an absolute majority in parliamentary elections
Friederike Hofmann, ARD Paris, daily topics 10:45 p.m., June 19, 2022
complicated future
Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne gets a seat. She appears monosyllabically in front of the cameras:
“The National Assembly has never known such a composition,” said the head of government. “We have to find compromises for France. The situation is a risk for our country in the face of national and international challenges. From now on we are working on an effective majority to keep our country stable and to carry out the necessary reforms. We take care of purchasing power and protect you. For France we have to find good compromises.”
Nicolas Domenach, who published the book “Macron, why so much hate?” this year released, foresees complicated moments. The economic situation will deteriorate and the government cannot conjure up enough money to cover all the problems. And:
“Parliament will become a cauldron, with a strengthened extreme left and an extreme right on the other side with pronounced rivalries,” said Domenach. “And there is the street with powerful demonstrations in recent years that made the government back down. No one has forgotten that. So now we have 2 forces that will be angry with the government – the street and the National Assembly.”
Conservatives are putting out feelers
The country will not be governable, the first voices are increasing. And leading Conservative politicians are already calling for an alliance with Macron that could secure a sufficient governing majority.
One of them, Jean-Francois Copé, even compares the situation with the Weimar Republic: “There were the extreme right in Germany and the extreme left, who opposed each other extremely violently for 10 years. And that ended in a dictatorship. That can certainly be the case today happen in France. We have to keep that in mind when we make far-reaching decisions in the next few days.”
When the bottom line is in, the political poker begins. June 19 changed France.