Although Emmanuel Macron’s victory over Marine Le Pen has been resounding and received with relief by those of us who believe in the European project, now the fight begins to win the majority of the National Assembly in the elections of June 12 and 19, a quote that some consider to be the third electoral round. This has been said by Le Pen and Melenchon, who from the right and the left will dispute those seats with Macron. And it should be remembered that in the primaries the results were quite tight because Macron obtained 27.7% of the votes against 23.1% of Le Pen and 21.9% of Melenchon, and both have already called on other parties of their respective ideological spectrums to join forces for the stake of the legislative elections and it is not easy for them to achieve it either.
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The parties that have guaranteed alternation within shared values for many years have fallen into irrelevance and France is today divided between a liberal center-right, the extreme right and left-wing populism, between the urban and cosmopolitan elites and the workers and peasants of the de-industrialized and rural areas. Suffice it to remember that 80% of Le Pen’s voters consider that their life is bad, that it is getting worse and that the rulers ignore them, which helps to explain why only 40% of the French approve of Macron’s management, and what abstention was 28%, the highest since 1969. Macron knows that his arrogant and elitist style arouses strong rejection and that he has been re-elected less on his merits than because of the fear that Le Pen still arouses despite the fact that he has more and more votes. If he continues like this, one day he will cross the 50% barrier because has moderated and no longer talks about leaving the euro or leaving the EU. Today the extreme right is an acceptable option for almost half of the French, something that should be of concern beyond the borders of the Exagon because that extreme right does not believe in the European project. Hence the satisfaction and relief at Macron’s victory, which at least guarantees another five years of building Europe. It has also been well received in the US because Both the extreme right and the populist left are anti-NATO and show sympathy and understanding for Russia.
Le Pen’s future is not easy either because she knows that among young people and workers who has really won has been abstention. To the doubts about his own continuity at the head of RN after three successive defeats, a fight with Eric Zemmour for the leadership of the extreme right is added in these legislative Not to mention what could happen if, due to the two-round majority system that prevails in France, a force that has obtained 13 million votes in the presidential elections is practically left out of Parliament and local governments, as happened in 2017 The “anger & rdquor; of which so much has been talked about lately can take to the streets again as they already did the yellow vests For all this, the legislative ones are presented in the face of a dog. In the short term, Macron needs a majority that allows him to carry out his program and not head towards an uncomfortable cohabitation with a prime minister (or prime minister) who is ideologically opposed to him, whether on the left or on the right, which would take away a lot of power in the sphere domestic because foreign policy is the almost exclusive domain of the president. That is why his choice of prime minister (or prime minister) capable of seducing left and right is very important. And he also knows that the future of his party is not assured in the face of the growth of extremism, and that his last five years as president cannot be an extension of the previous ones, since at this time it must be able to unite France and incorporate the sectors that today feel marginalized. In the longer term, it has to make the necessary reforms to achieve a new political consensus on shared valuess in order to avoid vertigo before the abyss that can open again in five years. Nobody said it was easy.